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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308254">antigonish</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue'>softlyblue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>paranormal activity [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mystery, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:15:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>82,471</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308254</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin finds them eventually, tapered white wax, twenty or thirty of them beside a box of ancient (but dry) matches, and a little brass dish with a slot that just about fits the base of the candle. He feels like Scrooge, fitting the whole thing together, tucking a few more into his pocket before striking a match - </p><p>Which immediately goes out. </p><p>“Oh, fuck you,” Martin says into the murk. </p><p>Again - </p><p>And again, the fire vanishes. Quick and efficient as a breath. He shivers in the sudden cold.</p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Martin Blackwood inherits an old country house, but there are more inhabitants than he first realises. When eventually the paranormal occurrences become too frequent and dangerous for him to ignore, he has to turn to a group of misfit ghost hunters for help.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>paranormal activity [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937767</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>675</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1006</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chou-Chou</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i've been working on this for the past few weeks and i've finally got ahead enough that i'm happy posting! title from the poem "antigonish" by william hughes mearns (inspiration for mag85 and also a very spooky poem, give it a read for those late night shudders.)</p><p>i've marked this as 1/10 but that number is subject to change at the moment - it's shaping up to look like a pretty long one, though, so that's fun. this was based off a discussion me and my girlfriend had about the bbc show "ghosts" which i would HIGHLY recommend to anyone who likes horrible histories or nightmare roommate comedy with a difference. </p><p>thank u to said girlfriend and to abby for reading over it &lt;3 enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: Two figures, a man and a woman, stand in an empty, wooden-floored room. There are windows behind them, but it is dark outside, and the video is filtered through greenish night vision. The woman is tall and broad, with dark skin and eyes, and a severe buzzcut. She is wearing blue denim dungarees and large boots patterned with sunflowers, and holds a piece of chalk and a torch. The man is short and skinny, scars flecking his brown skin, his dark hair tied in a loose bun on his head. He is wearing an olive jumper. He is looking intently at a patch of empty air in the room, and talking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The camera shakes and we see a third face, very close to the lens and out of focus. “He’s made contact, holy fuck you guys,” whispers a low, British, female voice, and the camera auto-focuses enough for the viewer to see a pale Asian woman with chin-length black hair, dyed vibrant pink from the ears down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a muffled thumping noise and a thumb over the camera lens as the woman readjusts the camera back on the initial two figures. The woman is alert, holding the chalk like a weapon. The man is still talking, and looks dazed. He says: </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“And then I took my leave and I didn’t know where I was going and I thought I would be going to heaven but I didn’t see no saints and as I said I was very cold and I thought the lot of them would find me and I took what I could and I thought I said sorry and I’m stuck here ever since and I’m stuck here ever since and I’m stuck here ever since.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He speaks in a refined, southern accent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy shit, Jon,” says the woman behind the camera as the man falls to his knees still looking at the patch of air. The video cuts out with another muffled sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tim is playing a game of chess against himself in the library, and losing quite spectacularly, when he hears the noise of rubber crunching against stone, and the noise of a car engine chugging uncertainly through the lower gears. He jumps up with such hurried, excited abandon that if he was still corporeal he'd have scattered the chess board, pieces and all, so really it's lucky for him that his body passes unheeded through the dusty table. He doesn't bother with the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"A car! I heard a </span>
  <em>
    <span>car!"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally Tim quite likes using the doors and the stairs, but it's been weeks since there was a car and he's so bored he hasn't got time to pretend to be human. He collects Sasha halfway through the first floor, she almost as excited as him, and Daisy is already waiting for them at the huge windows in the entrance hall, her hands resting pointlessly on the folded shutters, her back rigid with excitement. "Nobody's got out yet," she tells them, as they crowd around her shoulders. "Sun's on the wrong side of us - can't make anyone out in there, either."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The three of them squeeze in so they can all get a peek, arms and sides and shoulders mingling amongst one another - Tim has his hand partially inside Daisy's thigh at one point, but although it causes discomfort it's the only way for all of them to get a view at once. Having your hand inside another apparition isn't unlike having it inside a bowl of cold custard; oddly textured, yes, and deeply unpleasant, yes, but not harmful in the slightest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ford Fiesta," Sasha helpfully supplies - neither Tim nor Daisy are good on cars past the mid-thirties.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The car, Ford Fiesta or not, looks like it's seen better days. There's a dent above one wheel arch and mud caked to the sides, and the windscreen is flecked with the corpses of bugs in times gone by, a sort of testament to how far you can really push a car before its next wash. The man getting out of the driver's seat looks like he must have squeezed himself quite uncomfortably in there in order to fit, never mind </span>
  <em>
    <span>drive </span>
  </em>
  <span>the thing - he's tall, and more than that he's large, broad shoulders, wide torso, long legs, round face. His hair is ashy-blonde, springy and curly, and looks like it might be pretty if it was allowed to grow past the top of his head. He squints through blue-rimmed glasses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He doesn't look like a Blackwood," murmurs Daisy thoughtfully. "I wonder if Elias will recognise him."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man, Blackwood or not, seems pretty apprehensive, and Tim can see why. The manor has been built to impress, in the style of pompous country houses everywhere, and one Ford Fiesta (even in very good condition) looks sad and wilted in front of things like Grecian pillars and yew trees wrapping around each other in the grounds and ancient bird-baths and the like. "Where </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>Elias?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Skulking, I think," Sasha says. She's leaning the furthest forward of all of them, her nose dipping right through the glass. "Look, look, look, he's got a </span>
  <em>
    <span>key. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Oh, bless him, they must have dug a cousin up from someplace-or-other."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Indeed he does have a key. He has a whole set of them, in fact, on a little ring attached to something bright and plastic and pink. Tim recognises at least the front door, the basement, and the shed furthest from the house, but there are many more he doesn't. "He must be a Blackwood. The will was pretty specific."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He's funnily-dressed for one," Daisy remarks. "Unless the fashion's changed dreadfully, but I doubt it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man walks very slowly up to the front door, leaving his car lying open, and they all hear him fumble with three or four incorrect keys before he gets it right. Tim moves from the window first, pulling the edges of himself out of the two women with a sucking, flooding feeling - like, in fact, pulling a hand out of cold custard - and he doesn't have to look around to know they're both doing the same. Daisy and Sasha are as desperate as he is, or probably more, for some new entertainment around here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Paper, paper," Sasha hisses, "Tim, </span>
  <em>
    <span>read it."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Sure enough, there's a folded wad of brown paper in the man's front pocket, sticking out alarmingly close to falling, and Tim dives almost onto his hands and knees to read the typed address there.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin Blackwood </span>
  </em>
  <span>is the first line, followed by an anonymous London address. "He's in the family, all right," Tim says with no small amount of surprise, as this </span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin </span>
  </em>
  <span>stands in the entrance hall with his mouth hanging open and his eyes comically large behind his glasses. "Martin. That's not a family name at all, is it?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes Martin ten minutes, maybe less, to carry his carful of bags and boxes into the hall, where he leaves them in a little pile below the stairs. They all have paper tags tied to handles or stuck on the top with clear plastic tape, block capitals telling anyone who cares to read them that the owner is </span>
  <em>
    <span>MKB </span>
  </em>
  <span>and that he lives at that same London home Tim read on the envelope. It means very little to him, as he hasn't been back in the city in almost a hundred years, and the street isn't one he was aware of then - but then, he wouldn't be. All he recognises are the letters. Sasha is similarly clueless, and Daisy no help at all, and Elias still hasn't emerged from wherever he's hidden himself away, so they all three of them sit on the stairs and watch Martin fuss around with his heaps of miscellaneous stuff, muttering to himself the whole time. Both his pinky-fingernails have been painted dark blue. He doesn't wear any jewellery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I bet he's a reader," Sasha says, leaning forward to see what's inside one of the popped-open boxes. "Let's see - let's see - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Austen, Coleridge, Conan-Doyle... </span>
  </em>
  <span>who's that-? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Herbert, </span>
  </em>
  <span>never heard of him… </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fry, </span>
  </em>
  <span>that’s interesting..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy drifts off, peering into the rest of Martin’s bags, but Tim stays on the stairs with his chin in his hands. Martin looks nervous and twitchy and not at all like someone who owns this house should look, and none of them have ever seen him before so he must be a Blackwood dug up from </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>far down the family tree. Not that it matters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin leaves his stuff at the bottom of the stairs, but fishes out a plastic bag full of something, and goes in search of the kitchen. He’s going the wrong direction, but none of them can very well tell him, can they?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias emerges sometime after lunch, which had been a plastic pot full of something that Tim thought was also plastic until Sasha informed him it was noodles. Martin had brought his own electric kettle with him, a tiny one that had batteries in it instead of one that plugs in - which is completely redundant, since there’s a perfectly serviceable range there just waiting to be used. But Sasha </span>
  <em>
    <span>also </span>
  </em>
  <span>said quite a lot of houses these days didn’t have ranges, which Tim supposed he’d have to take. There probably isn’t very much oil left in the tank anyway. Florence was terrible at remembering to call the company.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He doesn’t look like a Blackwood,” says Elias, having been dragged by Daisy out of wherever he was lounging. He stands - never sits, Elias doesn’t like to interact with the corporeal too much - behind them, peering at Martin critically. “Too round of the cheek. Too square of the jaw. Too </span>
  <em>
    <span>blonde.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“He wouldn’t fake his name, though,” Daisy says doubtfully. “I don’t think they let you do that these days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, indeed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias is the oldest ghost in Blackwood House, or at least, the oldest ghost that still bothers to pull himself into human form. He died sometime at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tim reckons, although he’s always been shirty about the details, and out of the four of them he’s the one that hangs around upstairs the least. But he’s always interested in new </span>
  <em>
    <span>living </span>
  </em>
  <span>people to the house, and he has a brain for faces - Blackwood faces, at the very least. He stands in the doorway to the kitchen behind the three of them, stiffly upright, touching nothing but the floor, while they hang off his every word. “He </span>
  <em>
    <span>may </span>
  </em>
  <span>be a Blackwood,” Elias finally concedes, watching Martin hunt in vain for a bin before leaving the empty plastic pot where it stands on the kitchen table, “But he’s a very distant relation. The old woman must have had someone closer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doubt it,” Sasha says. She rubs the tip of her small, snub nose. “Never married, unless she did it before I died-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Daisy says. “No, she never married.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all turn their attention to Martin once more, who’s now rooting in the cupboards under the sink and beside the switched-off fridge, every part of him vanished deep into them, his warm jumper falling down to his mid-thigh so all they can see is a pair of shoes and a wriggling green-woollen blob. “Bin, bin, bin,” Martin mutters, loud enough that they can hear him, “Come </span>
  <em>
    <span>on, </span>
  </em>
  <span>there must be one-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually he finds a crumpled black bin liner and has another fight with the pedal-pump bin by the back door until the bag is fitted over the mouth of it. There’s a clump of ancient spiderweb at the front of his hair, clinging to the curly blonde locks over his forehead, and he hasn’t noticed yet. “Bastard - </span>
  <em>
    <span>bollocks,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>he swears into the corner of his mouth, brushing the dust off his shoulders, and with a huff he flings the stuff in his pockets down onto the table before he stomps out of the room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He has the legendary Blackwood patience,” Elias says archly. “Thank you for telling me.” He drifts away, then, down through the stone flagstones into the basement where he prefers to spend most of his time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha wrinkles her nose. “Depressing bastard. Hey, what’s that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the letter Tim read the address of, but the force with which Martin flung it has dislodged the few sheets from the ripped top of the envelope, and around half of the letter can </span>
  <em>
    <span>probably </span>
  </em>
  <span>be read around the brown paper. “Letter - huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Dear Mister Blackwood,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Daisy reads, slowly, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“We are writing to inform you of the regretful passing of Florence Blackwood, on September twelfth 2017. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Has it been that long?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Three winters,” Tim says. He’s slid onto the table, dangling his feet under the wood. “Yeah, I guess it has been.” </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Miss Blackwood’s will did not-” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Daisy stops and makes a growling noise of irritation. “The rest is underneath the - I can’t see it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha shrugs. “It’s easy enough to see what happened, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” her dark hand waves in the hair, and the three bangles on her wrist clatter down to bounce off each other high on her forearm, caught by the bunched-up sleeve of her cardigan, “So Flo dies, yes? Big old house, big old grounds, I’m sure the National Trust was just aching to snap it up, but old Flo has a will and there’s the Blackwood inheritance to cope with, too. Old Flo hardly blew through the money in her later years. So whoever needs to collect their share grabs it, and the solicitors probably dig into the pile too, but you can’t just ignore the will. So they open the will and Flo’s said she wants to leave the house to the closest remaining Blackwood, but since she’s an old unmarried woman and the last of her siblings and probably the last of </span>
  <em>
    <span>their </span>
  </em>
  <span>kids, there’s no immediate remaining Blackwoods left to inherit. The bank rubs its hands, the government wants to collect, the National Trust is already printing the information sheets, but the lawyers don’t fancy getting caught up in all that shite - there’s a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot </span>
  </em>
  <span>to cope with when something as big as this passes into the public fund - and so they’re hunting for a Blackwood, </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>old Blackwood. They trawl through a few family trees, find an estranged aunt or something, she’s dead oh well, has she any kids, they find this Martin guy in some dive in London, they say </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey kid it’s your lucky day don’t worry about the inheritance tax </span>
  </em>
  <span>and they dollop the responsibility on him.” Although she doesn’t need to breathe anymore, all the same Sasha inhales deeply. “You get me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sort of,” Daisy says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basically,” Tim says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Not really.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So now it’s Martin’s responsibility to sell the place, or do it up, or donate it to the Trust or whatever he wants to do, and he’s got bagfuls of money but Flo’s put a clause in the will. Something like Blackwood House needs to be occupied by a Blackwood. Some sneaky thing like that. So our poor Martin loads all into his car, pays off his rent, and drives down here cursing clouds with silver linings the whole way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So he’s here to stay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha shrugs again, but she looks a lot more animated than she did - lecturing is one of the surefire ways to get the light back into her eyes. “If I were him, I’d be looking into ways to sell up. I can’t imagine this place is where he thought he’d be living, and if he’s from </span>
  <em>
    <span>London…” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Change of pace,” says Daisy, tugging on the end of her plaited hair thoughtfully. “But in the meantime Florence’s will won’t let him leave?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably,” Tim stretches out, wishing he could just tug the letter out of the envelope and read the whole thing. “Do you think he’s scared of ghosts? Do you think he’ll do anything interesting? And - where’s Elias gone?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Martin shivers a little deeper into his warmest jumper, wrapped in a blanket pulled from one of the thousands of massive beds on the first floor, and wishes this place at least had an active TV license, or, like, wifi of any kind. There’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>barely </span>
  </em>
  <span>any phone signal and his is straining at the limits of the single bar, converted into a hotspot so he can check his emails from his laptop instead of on his shattered phone screen. He’s hunched up on the dreadful paisley sofa in the first room he came across that had anything to sit on - it looks like it might be a lounge, or a sitting room, but it could quite equally be a, a, a billiards room, or whatever it is rich people filled their houses with back in the day. He hasn’t got any emails from the solicitors, or from his mother’s care home, just a few from his landlord and his landlord’s accountant letting him know everything went through okay. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, he knows that. He has a few messages from Basira telling him to ring her when he gets the chance, and a text or two from the flat groupchat wishing him well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shudders again. The house is </span>
  <em>
    <span>freezing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but there is a grate in every room he’s been to so far, and from what he’d seen on the drive up the lane there’d been plenty of wood. Maybe the rest of his life will be spent chopping trees down and then up and then burning the results. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A strange noise from the door makes him leap almost out of his skin, his heart hammering against his ribs, but there’s nothing there when he looks. No electricity in the house either - all that was shut off when the old woman died, and Martin’s unappetising pot noodle for dinner had been all the worse for the battery-operated kettle he’d nicked off Derek in his flat. Didn’t boil the water half at </span>
  <em>
    <span>all. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re in a big old house,” he murmurs to himself, hand pressed against his chest to calm his heart, “No lights, no heat, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>no ghosts. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Ghosts aren’t real.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’ll wait until the sun sets to ring Basira, who won’t judge him too much for needing another voice to scare away the dark. No water. How’s he going to brush his teeth? Okay, so tomorrow, ring the water people, ring the gas people, ring the </span>
  <em>
    <span>whoever </span>
  </em>
  <span>people, and conduct a proper exploration. He can do that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can totally do that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wrapped in the blanket still, he leaves his laptop on the horrible sofa, shining brightly into the darkness of the room lit only by the dying sun. It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>freezing. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He finds what he’s looking for back in the kitchen, in the bottommost drawer of a heavy wooden dresser - candles, tapered white wax, twenty or thirty of them beside a box of ancient (but dry) matches, and a little brass dish with a slot that just about fits the base of the candle. He feels like Scrooge, fitting the whole thing together, tucking a few extra candles into his pocket before striking a match - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which immediately goes out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck you,” Martin says into the murk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And again, the fire vanishes. Quick and efficient as a breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luckily the box is basically full, but he strikes almost ten more before he has the flame going strong on the wick, the first dribble of wax cascading comfortingly down the length of it. It’s like someone had been pinching the tip of the match as soon as it was struck, the sort of trick Martin used to play on friends at birthday parties in primary school, nipping the candlelight just as they would make a wish. </span>
</p><p><span>Although the room is instantly brighter, the candle casts weird shadows into the corner, beside the dusty range, the huge dresser, the scarred, heavy wooden table, the cabinets full of whatever rich old people fill their cabinets with.</span> <span>Martin tugs the blanket closer around his shoulders, and wishes someone else was here with him - Basira isn’t scared of the dark. </span></p><p>
  <span>And </span>
  <em>
    <span>neither is he. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Of course he isn’t. That would be stupid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he leaves the room he passes through a patch of freezing cold air, and oddly enough it reminds him of - cold, something cold and thick. Like cream. Or custard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He runs as fast as he can back to his phone, all the same, and calls Basira while peering into the corners of the room for - what, exactly? Bugs? Mice? Something that hangs around and pinches candles and turns invisible just to fuck with him? Don’t be stupid, Martin. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t be stupid, Martin. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hey,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says, picking up after a few rings, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“So what’s it like? Madly haunted? Is there a vicar wandering the grounds? Did the Captain do it in the drawing room with the hacksaw?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve only been in three rooms altogether,” Martin says, pressing the heel of his palm into his eyes, slumping onto the sofa and dislodging his laptop to the floor. “Cold, empty, nothing works at all. No vicars, no murders, no Cluedo.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs down the phone line. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Well that’ll do it. Is it nice?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t really know. It’s… cold. And dark. I’ve got a bloody candlestick in a dish here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Very Dickensian.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s what I thought.” He chews on the edge of his thumb, tugging at the skin there, wincing when his teeth dig in a little too deeply. “Every single room is massive, though, and I don’t know which bed the old lady slept in. I don’t want to - uh, I think I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight, to be honest. Explore it in the light.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the background of Basira’s call he can hear clinking, clattering, and it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>only nineish. She’s probably just got off shift, and he can see her now shuffling around her little kitchenette where there is light and a kettle that actually boils things and, and a toaster, and - yes. Things. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“That sounds pretty sensible to me,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>she says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you sure you’re okay?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not particularly. But it’ll be better when I have the electric hooked up. And - and water.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“There’s no water?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“No nothing. The old lady died, what, three years ago? I guess the solicitors shut all that stuff off until they found someone to inherit. So muggins gets the job of setting it all back up again, of course.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Of course.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I keep getting - I don’t know,” Martin looks into the light of the candle, which seems pathetically small against the looming dark in the corners of the room. “Will you laugh at me if I say bad vibes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes, I will.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I won’t say it. But there are </span>
  <em>
    <span>cold </span>
  </em>
  <span>places.” A shake rattles through him, and he hopes - no, he knows - he’s imagining the ice that brushes his shoulder for a second. “I think it must be the drafts, windows open or something, but it’s - well, it’s weird.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s a big old house and you’re on your own,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says, not completely unsympathetically. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Of course you’ll be spooked.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, of course,” he mumbles.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>"Holy</span>
  <em>
    <span> fuck!"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin stares, eyes wide and hands pressed to his cheeks, at the fallen stone right in front of his feet, stones kicked up around his boots, shattered chips of brick and dark carvings around the impact. He steps back, and they can both of them - Tim and Sasha - see how badly his hands are shaking, the way his legs tremble, the way he falls against the side wall of the house. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"What the hell?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"How the hell did that happen?" Sasha looks frantically up to the roof and then down to Martin, sitting against the wall now with his arms wrapped around his knees. "Wh- it's not loose at all!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Or it </span>
  <em>
    <span>shouldn't </span>
  </em>
  <span>be," Tim murmurs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The three youngest ghosts have been following Martin since his arrival three days ago, because it's tremendously interesting to watch a real person that isn't actively dying or so old as to be - well, basically dying anyway. Mostly he's been talking to various people over his phone, and now the light switches all mostly work, there's running water in every bathroom but one, and the radiators are almost all functional as well. And they've toned back on touching him, too, since that first night; he's a lot more sensitive to them than Florence had been, and Tim feels almost guilty about how badly Martin's starting to flinch every time he walks through a cold patch that's actually Daisy's torso, or Sasha's swinging legs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll go check," Tim says. There's a deep unease in his stomach, a sort of rocking unrightness somewhere he doesn't want to investigate. "I - no, because there were those masons - it was only ten years ago. The roof can't be so-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Go </span>
  <em>
    <span>check, </span>
  </em>
  <span>then," snaps Sasha.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim digs his foot into the stone of the facade, just to get a kick upwards, and propels himself into the air. The drift up into the sky is a slow one, without the aid of the house around him, but Tim isn't like Elias; he can't move in space entirely without the help of physical buildings. Sasha he can see still on the ground, darting nervously around Martin and the lump of dislodged stonework, one of the ugly crenellations that a Blackwood before Tim's time must have thought gave the place an air of something. They </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>loose, yes, but -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. Stonemasons. Roof-work. Clean bills of health. Things like that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And sure enough up there, there isn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>wrong apart from the clean break there, as though the lump had just been snapped off in one go. Nobody present, either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And if Martin hadn't stopped walking right at that second, distracted by the trilling of the phone in his pocket -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim frowns, and then steps up onto the edge and jumps off. He lands without a sound next to Sasha, and they stand watching Martin have a small, but quite intense panic into his knees, his phone buzzing all the while in the back pocket of his jeans. "Nothing up there," he says quietly. "Just the place where </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>lump isn't anymore."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe Elias saw som-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What on </span>
  <em>
    <span>Earth </span>
  </em>
  <span>happened here?" Elias' hand, followed by the rest of him, emerges from the ground where the basement of the house stretches under the yard. "I - oh, God, is that part of the roof?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It almost brained him," Sasha says. "Landed right next to him. Jesus </span>
  <em>
    <span>Christ."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin, hands trembling, wipes wetness from his cheeks, and tries to shake his phone free of his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, it just fell?" Elias starts forward, his face drawn in confusion, but draws back before he reaches the man himself. "Things like that don't happen-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Explain that, then," Tim waves his arm at the block. "Oh, hell."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ba - Basira," Martin chokes down the phone pressed to his cheek now, his other hand wrapped around his wrist to support it. He stays sitting against the wall, eyes fixed on the lump of stone. "Oh, fuck - fucking hell, you will </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>believe what I - what just happened to me-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Most strange," Elias says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim swaps a troubled look with Sasha.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most strange indeed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then, the next day, Martin troops into the hall sopping wet and shivering violently, and informs the mysterious Basira on call that it felt like somebody had pushed him into the lake and held him down, and that he'd only just managed to break away and cling to the underneath of the jetty.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then two days after that he’s sniffling down the phone when something happens to his car as he's going to the village, and he has to sharply swerve so as not to smash into one of the trees lining the drive at a million miles an hour.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then a few hours after he's recovered from </span>
  <em>
    <span>that, </span>
  </em>
  <span>the roof tries to kill him again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"This is nuts," Sasha says to Tim. They pair off the most, when Daisy's retreating into one of her sulks in the gun room and Elias is doing whatever Elias does in the basement. Sasha has tucked herself into the little window nook of the library, her socked feet under her, playing with one of the kinks in her long and curly hair, worry passing over her face like clouds on a clear field. "It's like the whole place is out to get him."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim, lying face-down on the carpet in front of the grate, makes a grunting noise. "I'd think it was haunted if I didn't know that was </span>
  <em>
    <span>us. </span>
  </em>
  <span>But something's going on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Something, definitely," Sasha murmurs. She's the most recently dead of all of them, although it's still been over thirty years since she arrived. "I wonder..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hm?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, Daisy's almost the oldest. There's no point asking Elias, I suppose, but we could ask her if this has happened to anyone since she's been here."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nobody since </span>
  <em>
    <span>my </span>
  </em>
  <span>time, and I wasn't long after Daisy," Tim says into the carpet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes, but Daisy was here when the Blackwoods were still-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Around?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Active, I would say," Sasha sounds distracted, and distant, like she's looking out the window. "Whatever it is, Martin won't stay here much longer if it keeps going on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He won't be </span>
  <em>
    <span>anywhere </span>
  </em>
  <span>much longer if it keeps going on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't be morbid, Tim."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm just being realistic."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, you're being </span>
  <em>
    <span>morbid."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim lifts his head from the rug and gives her his best grin. "What the hell else do you expect me to be?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"-And I keep hearing knocking on the walls at night," Martin says, flapping his hands frantically in the air as though Basira will see him and believe him the more for it. "And the lightbulbs in the kitchen keep blowing, and in my bedroom, and I'm going through matches like - like - oh, I don't </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>what like, and it's - listen, if that was all I would think it was paranoia, but there's the, the, the roof on the ground to prove it, and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>I felt someone push me into that lake, and my car - fuck, it's crumpled. I almost crashed. It felt like someone just grabbed the wheel and - and yanked it, and-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Martin, calm down."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't think that's physically possible right now," Martin says as sarcastically as he can. "Basira, I'm being fucking - I'm - a house is trying to kill me."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"No, I don't-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, what else do you suggest?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sighs down the phone. If Martin was slightly less manic, slightly less scared, he'd feel sorry for how exhausting it must be to be friends with him right at this very second in time - to talk him through the panic of speaking to posh old solicitors, and then to prod him into having to move out of London for the time being and quit his terrible job at that bookshop, and now to talk him out of believing that the house he's inherited has it out for him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"I have a few ideas. This could all just be coincidence, but..."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"But?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"You remember that girl I knew from that case - the break-in at the CMH?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, vaguely," he says, slumping on the side of his bed, abruptly wiped clean of any energy he might have had left remaining. "Why?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I was doing follow-up with her yesterday. Turns out that's her whole thing."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What is?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"You know. Ghosts, haunted hospitals, exorcisms, the works. She sent me a link to her website - there's three of them, I think. Two or three. They get commissions from suckers like you in big old houses and they go up and they get rid of whatever spooky - I don't know, whatever needs getting rid of. But she seemed to take the whole thing quite seriously."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, well, she would, wouldn't she?" Martin stares unseeing into the candle flame, and wonders which direction the next attack will emerge from. "It's a profitable business, ripping off idiots."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Well, with that in mind, can I send you the link, or not?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"If you really want to, sure."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira's voice is quite soft, like she's talking to a spooked animal. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"I would come down there, you know. If you asked me to."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know you would, which is why I'm not going to," he says. Everything about him is tired, and he wishes he hadn't packed up all his stuff </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite </span>
  </em>
  <span>so hurriedly, cut all his connections in London with the reckless abandon that comes with being told you've inherited a grand old country house and a few million pounds all wrapped up in the bargain. His phone buzzes against his ear, presumably with the link she'll send him. "Will it make you happier if I check the link out?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"It might make you happier, which is sort of the priority here, isn't it?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I mean, it depends. Are they real or are they a scam?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"The girl I was talking to seemed pretty damn convinced."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay," he sighs, "I guess I'll - what, read a few blog posts? Watch a few videos?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Yeah," </span>
  </em>
  <span>she sounds warm, pleased, and he guesses he's been worrying her more than he meant to these past few days. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Yeah, you do that."</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jonathan Sims is not having a good day, and Myriam Barratt isn't particularly either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leans forward, rubbing at his cheek exhaustedly. “Mrs Barratt, are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>it was ginger? White and ginger? You’re absolutely positive?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the door, Georgie raises an eyebrow, camera held at her thigh to get Jon and the empty bed in the shot. Melanie is outside, fielding anxious family members away from the door; Jon can barely work with a lens pointed at him, nevermind a gaggle of grieving cousins and aunts-three-times-removed looking through the windows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon makes a face at her, and then turns back to the shade of Myriam, sitting on the bed. She is - she </span>
  <em>
    <span>was - </span>
  </em>
  <span>a small French lady, and apparently moved to London in 1964, if the reminiscing of her son is anything to go by. Fell in love with Allan Barratt, a mild-mannered plumber, after a summer holiday in Cornwall where Allan was staying in the cottage nearest her family, and didn’t look back once. Four children, nineteen grandchildren, and a handful of doting cousins near Bayeux, so why won’t she pass on?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Cats. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Most people don’t realise it, but about ninety-percent of his job is hunting down cats for worried dead people and making sure they’re fine. The rest of it is dogs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“White and ginger,” he repeats, leaning forward with his thin fingers steepled under his chin, “And you called him - what did you call her?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Chou-chou,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Myriam says. “She is only very small. And white, and ginger.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you very much,” Jon says as dryly as he can, and he stands with the cracking of his knees, the snapping of his wrists, popping all of his knuckles for good measure along the way. “We’ll bring her back to you, and then you’ll pass on, yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, yes,” Myriam says faintly, waving a small and wrinkly hand, the bedsheets visible through her translucent form. “You’re a good boy for doing this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Done?” Georgie, taller than him even now that they’re standing side by side, thumbs the recorder off. “I’m not gonna lie, Jon, it’s difficult to make ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon speaks to the air about cats’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>spooky in any way, shape, or form.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” he says, slumping against the wall now the camera’s definitely off, “But it’s not my fault every bloody spirit in the place has only </span>
  <em>
    <span>one </span>
  </em>
  <span>piece of unfinished business and it’s making sure their little kitty gets one last - oh, I don’t know. Dish of milk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Guys,” Melanie hisses, popping her head through the door, her cheeks pink with the heat of the crowded little flat, “Are we done? Can we go?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can go,” Georgie puts a steadying hand on Jon’s elbow, and shoots him a concerned look. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will he make it home?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m tired, not deaf,” Jon snaps, passing a hand over his eyes. He stands stiffer, straighter, pulling himself away from Georgie’s grip and tugging on his jumper to right it. “I - </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I will make it home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You better,” Melanie says archly, dark eyes looking him up and down as she tucks a trailing pink hair behind her ear. “I’m not carrying you to the Tube - the nearest is White Hart, and it’s a bloody trek.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>walk.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything good for the cameras?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This’ll be commission-only, I reckon,” Georgie says, folding the screen of the camera back into the body and snapping the little windshielded mic off the top, bundling the whole lot into the backpack slung on one shoulder. “It’s another mental cat case.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop calling them that,” Jon says, still leaning against the wall, stars winking faintly in the corners of his vision. “But - yeah, pretty much. Old lady. I’ll go hunting for it tomorrow, bring it here, spirit begone, all that, but it probably won’t catch well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie’s face screws up. “Okay. We’ll cope, we’ll cope. Coming?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodbye, Myriam,” Jon calls, as Georgie tugs him out of the bedroom and into the hall, the expectant faces of the family members in the rest of the flat. “See you soon.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They aren’t the most </span>
  <em>
    <span>conventional </span>
  </em>
  <span>of their sort, Jon muses, pinned between the two women as they march him down the street towards the Underground in the fading evening light. Georgie, tall and well-built and beautiful, flowery and artistic and hooped-earrings under her shaved head, looks like she should be a performer, perhaps, or a student at an exclusive and very expensive university in the city centre. Melanie, small and energetic, dark-haired with the carefully trimmed edges a different colour almost every week, plaid shirts and tight jeans and angry boots, looks like she should be something in fashion, or art, something beautiful and unreachable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Jon, in his dark jumpers and muted shirts, with his long hair he refuses to allow Melanie to braid, looks - and has always looked - like a bullied librarian. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they make it work. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ghost Hunt UK </span>
  </em>
  <span>and her partner podcast, </span>
  <em>
    <span>What the Ghost, </span>
  </em>
  <span>collect a not-unreasonable amount of traffic with each upload, with the unique claim to fame that is Jon - someone who can see ghosts, according to the three of them, and who is single-handedly roaming most of the British Isles on commission from people with either too much money or not enough sense, getting rid of their little problems for them. Most of the little problems turn out to be old ladies knocking over vases to get attention - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And most of the attention, Jon thinks wryly, is on behalf of the cats left behind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(He’s had three already, rescued ghost-cats with nowhere to go, and without Melanie’s complaints and their no-pet policy, he wouldn’t have let them anywhere near the adoption centre.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>you’re okay?” Georgie asks once they’ve gotten to the platform, Oyster cards tucked back into phone cases, scuffing at the dirty rubber-marked ground. “You look pretty - you look tired, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel tired,” he says, leaning against the Tube map on the wall. “But I’ll survive. It’s been a - it’s been. Been a long week.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie snorts. “Right, there.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stand in silence, nobody on the platform this late at night and this far out of central London, just them and the roaring of the wind down the tunnel. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>been a long week. Melanie’s been wrapped up in a messy sort of police investigation, having been caught breaking into the Cambridge Military Hospital several months ago - what with one thing or another, and a few past incidents on other sites before, it’s been a right pain trying to shake first the Aldershot police, and then a strange detective from the Met who had been more interested in getting Melanie’s story than extracting any sort of a fine from her. Jon and Georgie had been worried on Melanie’s behalf </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyway, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but then Jon had been needed for a particularly rowdy shade out near Potters Bar - a collection of anxious veterinary students had emailed, and apparently something had been breaking plates, jars, and on several occasions, bruising the students. So Jon and Georgie ended up traipsing out to the very tip of the Tube line, where they had an interesting encounter with a poltergeist, and Jon escaped with only a very minor slice to his shoulder and a few bruised ribs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still. Myriam Barratt, pleasant or not, has turned out to be quite the straw on the camel’s back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon staggers into the train compartment when it hisses in, the three of them landing with a shaky thud into the seats. “I’m napping,” he announces, to the two of them and one drunk lying across three seats down the train, “Wake me when we’re home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie tugs his head down to her shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because Jonathan Sims has, for as long as he can remember, been able to see what nobody else can - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Call them shades, or spirits, or apparitions. When it boils down to it, Jonathan Sims can see ghosts. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Listen to this one,” Georgie calls through the flat, “Okay - </span>
  <em>
    <span>hi, guys, my name is Phil, I live in North London, I’ve been hearing this weird knocking on my window, do you think it’s anything to worry about?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Possibly the council needs to be - be more on the ball about the trees on the street,” Jon says. “Fob him off, Phil from North London.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Phil from North London officially fobbed,” Georgie says, and there’s the sound of intent clicking from the sofa. Jon wanders into the lounge, a mug of strong coffee cupped in his hands, setting it gently on the coffee table beside Georgie’s propped legs. “Thank you,” she says, eyes still flickering over their company emails, looking increasingly disgusted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing good, then,” Jon says, padding socked-feet back into the kitchen to get his own mug. Melanie still hasn’t emerged from their room, but she was up later than both Jon and Georgie, playing moderator on the comments of the last video they posted. Jon collapsed into bed almost immediately after arriving home, and he can only assume Georgie did the same; she’s the only one of the three of them who actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>willingly </span>
  </em>
  <span>wakes up before noon, instead of being woken by insomnia (Jon) or by her girlfriend (Melanie). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie shakes her head as he comes back in, carrying his own liquid breakfast. “Nope. Nothing. I suppose - I don’t know. A few trolls, a few attention seekers, a few </span>
  <em>
    <span>morons, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but nothing that even sounds like it might be worth it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hmm.” Jon tucks his feet underneath him, melting into the sofa cushions, and they sit in comfortable silence, drinking together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>hey, </span>
  </em>
  <span>here’s one for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie shoves her laptop off her knees and onto the sofa, just in reach of him. “Read that and see what you make of it - I’m gonna go wake Mel. She’ll be pissed if she misses the whole morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go, go,” he flaps vaguely at her, grabbing the laptop by the keyboard, “Tell her I want to be looking for that damn cat before lunch, or we’ll never find it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gotcha, captain,” she rips off a sarcastic salute and vanishes down the hall towards the bedroom she and Melanie share. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The email is just one of the several hundred currently cluttering up their company inbox, mostly because they attach it to the end of every YouTube video and every episode of the podcast. They aren’t too terribly popular, not in the slightest, but it is enough to get a few dozen messages every time they post - stuff like a haunted university-flat kettle, the ghost of someone’s mother, sad stories about family loss, and other less serious things. The face of Jesus in a warped floorboard. Occasionally, </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>occasionally, they get something which makes all the rest of it worth it, but it’s a chore having to wade through the shit to get to the treasure. </span>
</p><p><b><em>from: </em></b><a href="mailto:mkblackwood87@gmail.com"><em><span>mkblackwood87@gmail.com</span></em><em><span><br/></span></em></a><b><em>to: </em></b><a href="mailto:ghostuk@gmail.com"><em><span>ghostuk@gmail.com</span></em></a> <em><span><br/></span></em><b><em>subject: </em></b><em><span>Haunted????</span></em></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>body: </em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Dear Ghost Hunt UK, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m writing to you because I’ve come slightly to the end of my rope, and a friend sent me your videos. I’m sorry in advance if this isn’t the right place to email, or if this is inappropriate - please ignore it if it is! </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Last month I inherited a large country house in Devon, which is as far as I can tell Georgian but has been through a lot of builds, so could be a lot older than that. Ever since I moved in (long story) I’ve been experiencing some issues which I think you might be able to help with, or at least which might be of some interest to you. </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>I understand if this isn’t your style - I appreciate you must get a lot of spoof emails. I just don’t know what to do, and it’s getting worse and worse every day, and I’m going a little bit mad. Sorry again if this is inappropriate. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thank you, </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Martin Blackwood</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything interesting?” Melanie says brightly, slumping down beside him in one of Georgie’s t-shirts and a pair of pyjama bottoms. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Emails, </span>
  </em>
  <span>how engaging.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon yelps, holding his half-full mug away from him so the slopping coffee doesn’t spill over Georgie’s laptop. “Fucking - oh, Christ. Sleep well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You only look like that when you think something might be exciting,” Melanie says, ignoring him completely and leaning in so close her nose almost touches his. “What’s the scoop? Where are we jetsetting to? Anywhere glamorous?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nowhere at all,” Jon says. Georgie, smiling softly at them both, shuffles through the lounge into the kitchen. “I just - interesting email. Doesn’t sound particularly </span>
  <em>
    <span>good, </span>
  </em>
  <span>just different.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snatches it off him and begins to read out loud for Georgie’s benefit. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Slightly to the end of my rope… </span>
  </em>
  <span>god, dramatic, much? Haunted butter dish? Spooky ancient farm? What are we saying?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Old houses have more tethers, I suppose,” Jon says, the edge of his thumbnail slipping back between his teeth. “More - well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>potential </span>
  </em>
  <span>tethers. But I don’t know. If someone was being actually haunted, actually the victim of damaging compulsions, they’d be more-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Frantic,” Georgie helpfully supplies from the kitchen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Frantic,” Jon says. “Yeah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe he’s just posh. Stiff-upper-lip types.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s very polite,” Melanie says, still reading the email, “I think we should reply just for that. Reward for good behaviour.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That only works if they’re a return customer,” Jon says. When Georgie wanders in with another press of coffee, he holds his mug up to her, mumbling a little thank-you. “I don’t know. Devon’s a long way to drive just to see if someone’s as polite in real life as they are in email.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t be such a standoff, Jon,” Georgie says. She leans forward, and grins. “He said he just inherited a big old country house, right? With all the - the trappings, with all that involves?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jon says cautiously. “And your point is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Imagine how much he’ll pay for a certified ghost-hunter to get rid of his spirits for us,” Melanie says with a wicked squeal, wriggling where she sits. “Oh my god. If we’re lucky we won’t have to look for a lost old lady’s cats for </span>
  <em>
    <span>months.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t mind looking for-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t about you, Jon,” Georgie reaches across to pat him on the head. “This is about my sanity. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And </span>
  </em>
  <span>we could record some fucking thrillers in an old house. Watching you chat about old kittens with the air is, as I have gone on the record by saying before, not great entertainment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon scowls. “I don’t want to go to a big old house. I want to look for Myriam Barratt’s cat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will look for Myriam Barratt’s cat,” Melanie says, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she drafts a reply, “And as soon as we’ve found the damn thing we’ll load all into the van and drive down to Devon for the weekend. Think of it as a holiday.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jonathan,” Georgie says, and her and Melanie sound so buoyant that Jon knows he’s lost already, “Do you care about us - do you care about the livelihoods of your two best friends in the </span>
  <em>
    <span>entire world? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Do you care about whether we can buy clothes for our poor backs - food for our poor shelves - coffee for our poor mugs?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll email, tell him we need to discuss a fee,” Melanie says distractedly. “Jon, you go ahead and look for the cat.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon goes ahead and looks for the cat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He quite likes his job, because an uncommonly large chunk of it is wandering around London looking for cats, and pretending to ignore lots of people - living </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>dead. Ghosts without fixed abodes, without proper tethers, tend to be quite manic, warped things, with half-melted faces, flickering forms, wounds covering their bodies where the car hit them twenty years ago, business so unfinished so long ago that they can never move from that one spot they died in, and all they can do is scream. London is </span>
  <em>
    <span>full </span>
  </em>
  <span>of the things, as it would be, and so Jon is used to looking quite demented when he goes out in public - he twitches, and dodges empty patches of air, and pretends to see through people (living, of course) that attempt to talk to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But still. He quite likes his job. A lot of the stuff they get paid for, not the podcast or the show, is helping someone’s old granny, someone’s mum, someone’s dad, shuffle off the mortal coil and go on, and a lot of that is just - well, feeding the cat that they worried about. Making sure some old stray has a home. Sometimes it’s dogs, and sometimes it’s even people, but mostly - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cats. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Myriam had been so polite, yesterday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Jon is here, wandering through the streets of Tottenham, his phone buzzing in his pocket as Melanie and Georgie check in every half-hour to report that they haven’t found the thing yet. Melanie sends a picture of a frothy white mug and a huge gingerbread biscuit, and tells them she’s taken a break to go to Costa and arrange things with Mr Blackwood, about a possible trip to Devon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon stoutly ignores that. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>hates </span>
  </em>
  <span>the location trips, and Mr Blackwood sounds like exactly the sort of person he hates working for, as well; old, pots of money, apologetic in that way that old British men are where they use apologies as just another way to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>go do that now at once sorry for the inconvenience. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chou-Chou,” he calls, and feels stupid about it. He’s headed down the Creighton Road, away from the Tube station, and people are starting to give him incredibly funny looks. “Chou?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Melanie and Georgie </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>have a point. The Barratts will pay them for the service, of course, but there’s a big difference between finding a cat for an old French grandmother and doing something for whatever is strong enough to tether to a big old country house for - well, for as long as Mr Blackwood says it has. Georgian? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hah. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chou?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And they do also have a point in that Jon’s particular style of - of vanquishing ghosts is less-than-totally cinematic. It’s quite comforting to chat to Myriam Barratt tucked into her bed, but when they watch it back on video it’s just half of a conversation about kittens and someone’s dead husband. Sometimes Jon gets to be dramatic, and then they milk it for all its worth, but - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rubs the length of his left forearm, where the ugly bruise has just started to stain green. Not all ghosts go peacefully, and not all ghosts are totally incapable of interacting with the world of the physical. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon </span>
  </em>
  <span>- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One foot in the grave, one foot in the camp of the living, right? That makes him just that little bit more susceptible to basically everything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he will draw the line at going peacefully to Mr Martin Blackwood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s definitely some posh old git who will sneer at Jon and act superior to the girls and get in the road, and then when they show up, there won’t be a bloody spirit to be seen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Definitely.  </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Impressions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>it's thursday again! i hope this chapter feels good to everyone - the cast &amp; crew of this fic are quite big to be crammed into a small space, so this is a whistlestop tour of them all... and maybe a little intrigue creeping in the sides. i thought i would get this out before today's episode inevitably hurts me :)</p><p>(many thanks to cerys &amp; abby again for being the best)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>[Video ID: Georgie, a tall dark-skinned woman wearing a pair of yellow dungarees and a floral undershirt, stands with her arms folded in a badly-lit room. Melanie, a short Asian woman wearing a dark navy hoodie and patterned trousers, stands behind her, clutching to Georgie’s waist. The camera stands still on a tripod, aimed at the two women, but occasionally a brown thumb slips over the lens. A dark wooden cabinet is floating in front of Georgie, the drawers opening and shutting with loud slams. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>scared of this,” Georgie says. “This is quite pathetic and you know it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The drawers slam harder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t be silly,” Georgie taps her booted foot against the floor. “Are you going to tell the nice man why you’re harassing Mr Powell, or are you going to keep having a tantrum?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is an </span>
  <em>
    <span>incredibly dangerous poltergeist, </span>
  </em>
  <span>not a toddler,” Jon hisses from behind the camera. There’s the muffled sound of a struggle and the tripod the camera is mounted on falls over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Martin has taken to exploring the house with an umbrella up, so he can hear the sound of dust bouncing off the stretched plastic before something comes toppling down on his head - he’s also taken to spending nights in his car, in a sleeping bag with most of the useable sheets he’s been able to scrounge off the beds on the first and second floors. Even the slightest noise has him startling at shadows, and Basira, he can tell, is starting to doubt his sanity. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hell, so is </span>
  <em>
    <span>he. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>So he isn’t in the best of shape when the well-loved blue Transit rumbles onto the stone drive, late one night a few weeks after his first email to Ghost Hunt UK and a whole month after he first moved into Blackwood House. The winking orange display on the front of his car radio tells him it’s almost eleven, and he makes a sort of distressed burbling noise and tries to free his arms where they’re trapped by the layers of both sleeping bag and blankets. His sleep schedule has been sneaking later and later, since there’s no real way to block sunlight out from through the windows of his car, so he sleeps earlier and wakes with the sun. “Mmmfrwhfuck?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are voices outside, too, familiar to him, although he doesn’t know why. He’s not very awake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...This place has its </span>
  <em>
    <span>own postcode</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I’m not - I’m not that bad at driving. And Chou was getting... was getting whiny.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not saying you are, but I’m also saying it doesn’t look very lived in. Go take the cat for a fucking piss and lets go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I point out the car there? At ten-bloody-fifty-seven at night? Someone lives here. And nobody’s gonna make a haunted house look lived in if it’s only the one man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I still think this is all a sham,” says the first voice. It’s masculine, unlike the other two, and a lot more annoyed than they are. “I mean - I mean - </span>
  <em>
    <span>four hours? </span>
  </em>
  <span>When - when was the last time we drove this far? For what reason?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sligo,” says the second one promptly. “And that was a boat </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>you complained the whole way that time, too. Now shut up and be polite. We’re landing on him awfully late.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re not landing on him at all. Hey, how many servants do you think he has?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What </span>
  <em>
    <span>year </span>
  </em>
  <span>is it, Melanie?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin, feeling terribly self-conscious, chooses this moment to tug on the doorhandle, and momentum and gravity and the physics of squeezing quite a large Martin, six duvets, and a sleeping bag into a very small Ford Fiesta does the rest of the work for him. He rolls out in a heap of embarrassment, dripping blankets and scarves, and manages to land mostly on his feet in front of the three people standing against their van. He feels very foolish, and very small. “Um. Hello? Um. Are you - uh, are you in the right place? Do you need directions?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is this Blackwood House?” The most prominent of the three asks, managing to sound both kind and deeply apologetic at the same time. She’s tall and dark, her head completely shaved, wearing a loud pink dress hemmed with roses at the skirt and the sleeves, a matching belt tied tight around her waist. “I’m so sorry - um. My name is Georgie, Georgie Barker, and we - was it you I was chatting to on the phone yesterday? We got a bit lost on the way here. I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Ghost </span>
  </em>
  <span>people,” Martin says stupidly, trying to cover up a yawn behind the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. “Oh - Christ, I’m sorry, I’m being so rude - I - do you want to come in?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Honestly, I dunno,” says the girl beside Georgie. She’s a whole head shorter, her hair cut in a blocky black bob, dyed bright, bright pink at the ends, and she looks less apologetic than her companion. More - what, fierce? Her arms are folded over a badly tie-dyed t-shirt, and a dark, bobbled sweater is tied around her waist. “Is it haunted?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quite, I would say, but I - I don’t know. Maybe I’m hallucinating.” Martin rubs inside his eye with his thumb and wishes it was earlier. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can cover the petrol costs if you are,” squints the smaller one, and then smiles, like she’s just decided to be friendly, “My name’s Melanie.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m Martin,” Martin says, even though it must be obvious to them all. “I - yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t wait up. I just figured-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We got lost, like she said,” says the third person, standing at the back of their van where Martin can’t quite see him, “And do you have a - have a, a stove? I need to heat up some milk. And - and yeah. Sorry about being so late.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The third one shuffles around to the patch of ground illuminated by the van headlights, a small, wiry frame draped in a heavy green coat like a scarecrow, worn boots crunching in the stones, dark head bent over something in his top pocket. His hair has been braided clumsily down the side of his neck, and one of his ears is pierced, and when he looks up and Martin can see his bowed lips and his sharp nose and his bright, dark eyes, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows </span>
  </em>
  <span>any sort of dignity he might have gathered is out the window. “I’m Martin,” he says again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man looks oddly at him, and Martin can see his top pocket moving, wriggling. Something alive? Warm milk? “Yes, you mentioned,” he says. “I’m Jon. Jonathan. Jon, uh - Sims.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stand in awkward silence for a second, the three newcomers and Martin with a blanket over his shoulders and head, before Georgie coughs and breaks it. “I’m sorry, we-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, come with me,” says Martin hastily, “I’ve - well, I’ve been sort of stuck here for a month and it’s doing things to the brain. Sorry. Terribly rude. I’ll - well, the kitchen has been pretty safe so far, and I’ll - I don’t know if we should be sleeping in - I mean, I’ve been sleeping in my car for a few weeks now, but of course I’ll pay for a hotel-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can protect a few rooms,” Jon says, as they all begin marching towards the gloomy house. He sticks his fingers into his top pocket, and Martin can hear the sounds of something licking, a dry, scratchy sort of noise, like damp sandpaper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(What?)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um. Protect?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ward. Seal. Protect. Envelop. Whatever you - um, whatever you like to call it,” Jon says. The front door isn’t locked, and Martin pushes it open with the sort of reluctance people usually reserve for sleeping bears or unexploded mines. “I can stretch to two or three rooms, I’m pretty sure, provided Melanie does her think-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I can help,” Melanie says, and then at Martin’s look: “Like a magnifying glass for spirit stuff, me. I’m a portable healing crystal.” She leaps over the threshold and then looks </span>
  <em>
    <span>up </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>up </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>up. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“Holy shit, you weren’t lying! This place is </span>
  <em>
    <span>madness-” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have a very nice house,” says Georgie politely. She reaches out and places one hand over Melanie’s mouth. “Please ignore her - she isn’t house trained.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, at least, makes Martin smile, the first he’s managed in quite a few days. “It’s okay. The house is - it’s stupid fancy, if you ask me. I tend to - when I’m in here, I -” he grabs the umbrella leaning against the wall by the door, “-I tend to spend most of my time in the kitchen. If you put this up you can hear, like, dust crumbs before they fall? Quite a lot of the - of the, of the apparitions have been things dropping on my head.” He opens the umbrella and hands it to Georgie, who looks begrudgingly impressed at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s very clever,” Melanie says with her mouth free once more. “So shit keeps falling on your head?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pretty much.” Martin glances back at Jon again, and then does a swift double-take. “Is that a </span>
  <em>
    <span>cat </span>
  </em>
  <span>in your pocket?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Jon says slowly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cat in his pocket, its head and most of one paw sticking out into the air, mewls pitifully. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is not a cat,” says Jon. He lifts his hand and pushes the thing bodily back into his jacket. “You - um.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the kitchen now, Martin has to feel around for the light switch on the far wall, his hand gently searching in case it brushes up against something he doesn’t want to know about. Full now of more people than just him, it doesn’t seem so hollow, so empty at the corners, so full of dark and scuttling things that hide when he tries to find them. The oil has been refilled, too, and the range built into the wall now gives off a constant and reassuring heat, warming when everywhere else is empty and cold and impersonal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie folds the umbrella up, leaning it against one of the table legs. “Jon, stop being a creep and feed the damn thing. I’m sorry,” this directed to Martin, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Neither </span>
  </em>
  <span>of them are house-trained.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chou is a charity case,” Jon says haughtily, dragging both the cat and a small unmarked bottle of milk out of his pocket. It is </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>tiny, and very bedraggled, a sort of limp ginger-and-white pile of bones and fur and blinking eyes, now screaming quite aggressively having caught sight of the milk. He turns to Martin and Martin wants to recoil from the contact. “Do you have a microwave?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um. No. Sorry. You can - uh, warm it on the range?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess I can,” Jon sets the kitten down on the tabletop, where it continues its vicious scream. “She’s not socialised yet, but she will be. She’s a favour to a - friend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A ghost,” Melanie supplies, having plopped down in a chair, her chin resting on her folded arms. “A favour to a ghost.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin feels very, very tired, and very, very stupid. He fumbles for the chair behind him and pulls it over, draping his blanket over the back of it so he can create a little warm mound between him and the furniture. “So - so this is for real?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is?” Georgie, sitting beside Melanie, looks curious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The ghost thing. The coming here thing. That’s real?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks over his shoulder from where he’s begun to warm the small pour of milk over a pan. “I should hope so. Houses like this are chock-full of the things, and London’s only got horrible trauma and cat ghosts and I am </span>
  <em>
    <span>so </span>
  </em>
  <span>sick of chasing down lost pets for the dearly departed. Have you got any sugar?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin waves to the appropriate cupboard. “Um. Okay. Okay, thank you, so - so - so what is it you actually intend to do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know he doesn’t look it, but Jon is quite capable,” Georgie says dryly, as Jon comes back over to pick the cat up and bring her to the warmed, sugared milk. “He - well. He can see ghosts. Spirits. Passed-on things. It sounds dumb when you say it out loud, but he’s a - like a radio. And most ghosts, spirits, whatever you want to call thems, most of them are here because something prevents them from passing totally from this world, and so that’s what we do when we aren’t - filming dramatic videos. People hire us, we go there, Jon has a chat with the air and then we spend the week doing whatever that spirit needs to feel complete. Like - um, like that kitten. Chou. This old lady was haunting her son because she’d been feeding the stray cat, and she couldn’t pass on out of worry for the thing, so we found the cat and we-”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“And Jon,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Melanie says, waving her hand in the air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And Jon, thanks, said he’d take care of her. And Mrs Barratt vanished,” Georgie sits back looking pleased. “It isn’t always exorcisms and drama. But - well, we thought we’d want a change from London. And your case sounded unique.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, death by house is hardly a normal way to go,” Martin says, “I count twenty or so times for definite, but there could be more I missed. They’re always freak accidents, but - but the roof was fixed about fifteen years ago, I checked, and one day it was a vase that fell from the top floor down to where I was, and my car got stuck in reverse and it's never done that and I almost crashed into a tree, and I felt something push me into the lake and - and hold me under there, and once I reached out for the light in the dark and I grabbed onto an exposed wire and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>would </span>
  </em>
  <span>have got a right fucking shock only I was still touching the plastic bit, and I keep hearing tapping at night. On my door. On the walls. And someone yelling from the basement.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s in the basement?” Jon asks, leaning against the range now with the kitten in his arms, licking at the tip of his milk-soaked finger. His hair, Martin can’t help but notice, is beautifully shiny, and his cheeks have turned attractively pink in the heat of the kitchen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, not attractively pink, nor beautifully shiny. Just pink and shiny. Keep on topic, Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” he says and he hears how cowardly it sounds and he wants to look away, “I haven’t been down there yet. Every time I try it’s like - it’s like someone’s holding me back. Once I got as far as the key in the lock and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>swear </span>
  </em>
  <span>I felt a hand on my neck and I couldn’t breathe until I was back up in the hall.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks interested, his lips parted, his thumb slipping between them to chew on the nail. “That sounds like - like something, for sure, and I-” he looks around suddenly, his eyes focused intently on a point in the air completely empty of anything, and then his mouth snaps shut. “I think we should leave it until the morning, Mr Blackwood,” he says, voice distantly polite, looking at the air. “I can ward some bedrooms, if you’d like. Melanie will help.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Up the stairs is a long gallery hung with a collection of portraits, both painted and photographed, a scattering of other art pieces between them for variety. Jon’s eyes are stinging from the long drive, and he’s faintly embarrassed about how much of a fuss Chou made upon arrival, but the ghost that had floated up into the kitchen and pressed his long finger to his lips has made him intrigued more than anything else has. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And </span>
  </em>
  <span>convinced him further of what he already knew - there is more to this facade than meets the eye. There is more to the genial Martin Blackwood than he presents. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“These are the bedrooms,” Martin says hurriedly, waving his arm at a collection of four rigid, uniform darkwood doors opposite the stairs, spaced out along the corridor. “I hadn’t - I mean, all my stuff is in </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> one, so I suppose you can have your pick. Um. There should be spare sheets and things in the cupboards. I stole most of them for the car.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Georgie says politely, bending sideways as Melanie tugs her arm towards the room beside the one Martin had waved towards. “I’m sorry again for landing on you so late at night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s absolutely no problem,” Martin says. Rubs the back of his neck. “Goodnight, then. Ah - goodnight, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jon says vaguely, paying less than no attention to the conversation; the ghost from the kitchen has wandered down to the door beside the room Melanie has claimed, and is now standing against it with his arms folded, a wry smile on his lips - as anticipatory to speak to Jon as Jon is to speak to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He protects the bedrooms as quickly as he can with Melanie holding his shoulder, which isn’t actually as dramatic as it sounds; he just has to chalk an eye on the inside of any of the doors, two simple semicircles that trap a circle inside them, with three straight-line eyelashes coming from each lid. Jon can see ghosts and ghosts can see Jon, and this thing will give any spirit - vengeful, powerful, or otherwise - a second thought before they invade the space maliciously. Melanie acts as a magnifier. Where Jon can </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>the things, Melanie makes everything he does that little bit stronger, and any room she’s in is one where spirits tend to be at their thickest, their most concrete. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Martin says when Jon’s finished his door. He still has the blanket around his shoulders, and he looks even more tired than Jon feels, “I - really, thank you all for coming down. It means a lot. Goodnight, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jon says again, very faint. The ghost’s hand rests now on the doorknob of Jon’s room, and he can feel something odd in the back of his mind, like a fishhook tugging him down the hall. “Yes - quite.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he turns on his heel, Chou silent and sleepy in his pocket, and marches down towards the empty room by ghost. He can feel Martin watching him for most of the walk, and then there’s a soft, almost silent </span>
  <em>
    <span>click </span>
  </em>
  <span>as the bedroom door closes behind him, but Jon is too - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s something here. He knows there is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his pocket, curled up in a small and satisfied ball, Chou purrs. She’s a cat, so she can see the ghosts if she wants, but so far all she’s seemed to be interested in is napping and playing with the end of Jon’s braid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you been dropping things on Mr Blackwood?” Jon asks as soon as the door is closed behind him. He hardly looks around the room, just enough to notice the bare minimum - bed in the corner, decorative marble hearth opposite, half-melted candles in dishes on the mantelpiece, wooden furniture matching the sets downstairs, heavy curtains done in sunny seventies yellows and beige. The light he flips on is dim and flickers, and with a put-upon sigh he pulls his lighter from the pocket not currently occupied by the cat, setting it to the wicks of several candles far enough away from anything flammable that he won’t feel tremendously paranoid all night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s rude not to introduce yourself first,” says the ghost in a silken voice, “But to answer - no. No, I haven’t. And your name is Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon turns around and falls backwards on the bed, landing with a thump and a small puff of risen dust. “It is. And your name is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ghost is an older man, grey at his temples creeping into the brown hair on top, overlong and curling slightly at the nape. He has what Jon hates to call </span>
  <em>
    <span>Roman </span>
  </em>
  <span>features - the nose, the brow, the striking strength in his jawline, slender but not weak of figure, eyeglasses pinched over dark, shining pupils, a single broad scar down his cheek. He looks sharp all over, like someone’s taken a knife to his edges, and he’s dressed to accentuate that; if Jon would place him, which he’s not sure he can, he’d pin him around the end of the eighteenth, beginning of the nineteenth century. Cause of death: a wound over his heart, blood staining unpleasant dark brown over his heart onto his shirt. “Elias,” says the ghost, “Elias Bouchard. Did he ask you to come here, Jon? You have a rare talent for seeing. And a cat, of course. The tether of a witch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon closes his eyes. The bed is tremendously soft, dust or no. “I’m not a - I don’t have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>tether, </span>
  </em>
  <span>thank you, I’m perfectly human. He asked us to. Me and my friends. We - let’s say we deal with the particular sort of problem he’s coping with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm.” Elias is a strong spirit, Jon can’t help but notice; his appearance is so thick that he almost can’t make out the furniture out and through him. What must his tether be, to keep him so strong for so long? “And your </span>
  <em>
    <span>seeing. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Have you been able to do that, always, too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t see - I don’t, don’t see why I should tell you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hums. “No , no. I can see why you would think that. I suppose I just came here to warn you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s eyes fly open again. “I - warn me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, I don’t want to tell you... ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon wriggles up against the headboard so he’s sitting up again, fishing around in his pocket to try and salvage Chou before he falls asleep on top of her. “I can, can </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell </span>
  </em>
  <span>when I’m being manipulated, you know. I’m not entirely stupid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Forgive an old spirit for wanting to pass,” Elias drawls, deeply sarcastic. He folds one hand into the pocket of his waistcoat, and leans against the door, right beside Jon’s chalked eye. “There is more to this house than meets the eye; nothing would bring me greater pleasure than being shunted away from this world and onto the next.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In my experience, that isn’t how spirits work,” says Jon dryly. He’s aware he doesn’t look all that imposing at the moment, with a small cat asleep and drooling in his palm and his hair escaping the plait it’s been in since very early this morning. Gently, he tips Chou out onto the sheets and then slides in between the naked duvet and the sheetless mattress. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In your </span>
  <em>
    <span>experience, </span>
  </em>
  <span>yes, but I have been a shade for a very long time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How long, exactly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias raises one thin eyebrow. “So you ask questions, but I do not?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re the one with - with something to gain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, quite,” Elias strokes his free hand down the side of his waistcoat, down the length until he hooks his thumb into his other pocket, “And I will admit I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>much about it. But I’ve had a long time of being idle in here to try and work it out - try and see what’s stuck me here. I am not an uneducated man. I have no unfinished business, and I’ve been here for so long that in any case I should have warped into something vengeful a century ago. I don’t know what’s keeping me here. What hasn’t changed since I died?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm,” Jon’s eyelids are drooping, completely without his consent, and it says a lot about his line of work that being lectured by a ghost is something he finds he can drift off quite happily to. “And I suppose you have theories on that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you’re just dying - pardon the, the pun - to tell me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Elias says, quietly, and when Jon cracks open one eye he sees the man has faded somewhat into the woodwork, one shoulder out into the corridor already, the rest of his body rippling in the candlelight. “No, I’m not sure I should. The others - and Martin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon wishes he could be wide awake. “What are you saying?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias laughs sheepishly. “It isn’t my place to say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll tell you this, Jon, because I don’t want to see - I don’t want to…” Elias falters quietly, and murmurs something to himself, then: “I think you will find that Blackwood House is not all it appears to be. Nor are the inhabitants. I will - that is all I will say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, wait-” Jon bolts to sitting again, but Elias has already melted through the wall, and the chalked eye on his door is glowing with a phosphorescence that comforts him in its vigilance. Jon waits several seconds, and then says a heartfelt </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck </span>
  </em>
  <span>and falls promptly asleep. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wakes in the morning, woken by a violent strip of light leaking through a crack in the curtains; the light is the weak, milky sort that only comes a few moments after sunrise, and so he figures nobody else in the house will be awake. The eye on his door blinks slowly at him, in that imagined state you are in just after dreaming when everything is a little too active until your mind drags itself into the land of the living, and after Jon is sure nothing else will move he starts digging around the bed for Chou. All the candles he lit last night are puddles of wax and burnt-out wick disks, floating in the saucers and cups in which they were placed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chou he finds at the very bottom of the bed, wrapped up with her paws covering her nose. She blinks awake and, upon realising where she is, starts screaming as only kittens really can. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon closes his eyes and presses his thumb to the bridge of his nose. “Breakfast,” he agrees, and after fumbling on the bedside table for his glasses, he’s up and on the hunt. He hadn’t bothered to undress yesterday, so at least there’s that out of the way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the light, Blackwood House is even more impressive. Jon’s room faces the grounds (he assumes) where he can see a spreading cluster of trees and, in the distance, a sparkling lake, past it another cluster of trees and a small white roof. He guesses that must be one of the old summerhouses, a folly, one of those mock-Grecian temples that seemed to be so in vogue back in the day, and he makes a note to go exploring for it sooner rather than later. But as he leaves his bed, the gallery onto which the rooms lead to is an equally stunning sight; portraits line the hall on both sides, imposing painted faces scowling down at him. Jon wonders if he’ll see Elias amongst those cruel faces, and decides to find out just as soon as he possibly can. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The staircase back down to the ground floor is a long, creaky, wooden affair, and Jon winces with every sound his socked feet make on the joints of it. In the huge hall, it echoes, and he hopes he won’t be waking anybody up too early - he knows how Melanie can get when she doesn’t get to sleep to at least eleven in the morning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Breakfast for you, and then investigations,” Jon murmurs to Chou, replaying the conversation of the night before. Elias had been an -</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Interesting </span>
  </em>
  <span>event, and Jon certainly can’t see why a shade as old and composed as he would lie. Most of them want to pass on, after all, after a certain amount of time, and he doesn’t have any connection to this house or this family, no reason for Elias to lie to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he makes it to the kitchen, expecting it to be empty, there is both a ghost and a Martin there, sitting opposite one another at the kitchen table. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon!” says the Martin, his face alighting where it had been buried in a mug of something steaming. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” says the ghost, </span>
  <em>
    <span>his </span>
  </em>
  <span>face alighting where it had been set in a sort of bored grimace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good morning, both of you,” Jon says, waving at Martin but making eye contact with the ghost. Chou is still screaming in his hand, having seen both ghost and living person, and already he feels tired. “Did - you - um, Mr Blackwood, I mean - did you sleep well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Both of us? And call me </span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin </span>
  </em>
  <span>please, I’m not as terribly formal as that,” Martin touches his cheek, a nervous sort of action, “Is there a - I mean, are you for real? Is there a ghost in here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sitting across from you, yes,” Jon says. He sets Chou on the table, where she runs over to a bowl full of cereal milk and a few soggy cornflakes, and begins to drink with every sign of enjoying herself immensely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>me? Oh, Christ,” the ghost looks bewildered but not unhappy - something bright and pleased is dawning over his (rather handsome) face. “Can you do me a favour and open a new book for us in the library? There’s a page of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Great Expectations </span>
  </em>
  <span>there I can chant practically by heart, and it wasn’t very fun even when it was new.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon passes a hand over his eyes. “I - I - yes, I can see you. What’s your name?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, this is fucking excellent, I can’t wait to tell the others - Stoker, Stoker,” says the ghost, rising a little off his chair with sheer excitement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon pulls out the chair beside Martin and falls into it. Martin is looking at him quite hard. “His name is Stoker?” Jon says, addressing Martin but still looking at the ghost. “Name ring a bell?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Timothy </span>
  </em>
  <span>Stoker, Tim, Tim, no relation to the family, just a death on location,” babbles the ghost, Tim, his hardly-visible hands waving in the air. “Can the other two see us as well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, just me,” Jon says to him. And then to Martin: “Tim Stoker familiar at all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks both apologetic and shocked at the same time, which seems to Jon quite the achievement. “No, sorry, no, I - this all came quite a surprise to me. The house and everything with it. I didn’t even know I </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>an aunt Florence. Tim… no. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I died in twenty-three, so it isn’t much of a surprise,” Tim says, stretching out in his chair, looking thicker and realer by the moment, strengthening with the joy of being seen. (Another ghost thick despite age - the tethers in this place must be beyond the strength even Jon thought them to be.) He’s tall, broad, and very handsome, a beautifully curly mop of brown hair just a little too long by his ears; Jon imagines that if he removed the crisp white shirt and the dark blue trousers, he would be well-built. Twenties, yes, the clothes pan out, and a dark spot above his left ear to show how it happened. “Why are you here? Is it because Martin keeps getting - well, you must know we’re all worried about it. Things like that never happened to old Flo.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon smiles faintly at him, and leans forward to tickle Chou behind the ear. “I’m glad to hear it. How many more of you are there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>more than one?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin says, a horrified howl. “How many!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks tired, Jon can’t help but notice, despite the good night’s rest, and rumpled. His blonde hair is unbrushed, but not the worse for it; it looks pretty soft. Sleep crumbles down his cheek from one eye, and the other cheek is red where he must have slept on the corner of a pillow. “At least two,” Jon says, and tries to sound sorry about it. “Um. Sorry. About that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s me and Sasha, and then Daisy and Elias, and probably a few more shades and things that don’t come out - and there must be the thing trying to hurt Martin, too,” Tim says helpfully. “God, this is exciting. Which of us have you met already, or am I the first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least four, probably more,” Jon says to Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin does not screech or scream, to his credit. He just sighs into the mug of tea in front of him, and looks even more tired than before. “Of course there are. I’m sorry - did you want breakfast?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t tend to eat it,” Jon says bemusedly, watching with half an eye as Tim melts through the wall connecting the kitchen to the dining room and to the large entrance hall, his question unanswered, his fading face the picture of an excited child on their birthday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Most important meal of the day,” Martin recites, and then smiles, awkwardly. He’s wearing last night’s t-shirt, much like Jon, but unlike last night Jon catches how thin it is, a pyjama top instead of a real shirt. He wonders if Martin is cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s eyes skate away from Tim’s vanishing spot and attempt to climb up Martin’s arms, but stick at his shoulders. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be awake, to be honest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah - yeah. I’ve been getting up pretty early these days. No curtains on a car.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Makes sense,” Jon says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a long, and deeply uncomfortable silence. Martin wants him to say something, Jon can see, he wants Jon to continue a conversation; ask about the house, about the ghosts, about how Martin came to be here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is why Jon tends to take Georgie with him on trips of this nature - he can talk to ghosts until he’s blue in the face, but he always seems to stumble at the living people side of things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to find another one,” Jon says eventually, when Martin’s face has done a funny crumbling thing and settled back into looking dismal, “You can - uh. Mind the cat, if you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he flees. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sasha likes to sit in the library under the chandelier, most days, practicing her corporeality by trying to knock books off the high shelves. According to Tim, there used to be a little boy who lived in the house and who was forever knocking books from the shelves, and he and Daisy would huddle up beside each other all night and read by the light that they didn't need anymore. Sasha arrived on the scene long after little boys and activity - the year she became a ghost was the same year old Florence became permanently bedbound, and after that nobody ripped books from the shelves anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the same it is a calming room to be in. The windows are long, many-paned, and line the far wall beautifully, and it is on the second floor so Sasha can get a wonderful view of the grounds. She pushes herself from the floor to shelf to shelf to shelf until she’s by the roof, and she can peek out far enough to see even the road in the far distance, and the little beetle cars chugging from one place to another, and the little folly in the woods she never quite managed to visit when she was alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sasha! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Sasha!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Today she is sitting in one of the window-nooks, playing a game with herself. How heavy can she make her body before it stops resting on the cushion and begins sinking into it? Is this endurance training of a kind? “Good morning, Tim,” she says, still looking at her knees. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Van last night,” Tim says hurriedly, and when she turns to look at him he is grinning widely. “Did you see it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, </span>
  <em>
    <span>sort </span>
  </em>
  <span>of, but I thought it was just Martin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s called in some people to help him with the - the things, and guess what one of the people can do. Go on, guess. You’ll never be able to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re right, I won’t,” Sasha gives up on her game and floats back up into the unused air again, a smile on her face borrowed from Tim. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He throws his hands in the air. “Don’t make me beg, let me keep my dignity-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, I’m completely uninterested,” she teases at him, “Completely and utterly above it. If you want to tell me you’ll have to just wait. Or, of course, ask me to ask you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sasha-” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs. Tim makes her feel… more here, in a way. She thinks if he talked to her for long enough, she might thicken and condense and sit on the cushions after all. “I give in. What can one of the people do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leans forward and his smile has teeth in it. “His name is Jon, apparently. He can see me. He can probably see you too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha waits a beat, waits for the punchline, and then with an upset twist to her lip she says, “That’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>funny, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Timothy,” and heavies herself so she can drop through the floor to the portrait-lined corridor below, an angry twist in her stomach. Tim can be cruel, but that is - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mean. Very mean. Sasha spent the first decade of her death desperately trying to interact with the rare person that rumbled up to the house, refusing to accept that nobody could see her, that this would be it, and Tim knows that, and helped her more than Elias </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>Daisy ever did. But he has been dead longer than her and in a way, he has lost some of the warmer, squashier feelings Sasha still manages to keep. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Very mean!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>She shouts through the ceiling at him, and turns, meaning to go down and warn Daisy in the gun room but - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a man at the end of the corridor, blinking intently at the mirror that hangs over one of the vanities here, in between two paintings of old Florence’s grandmother and father respectively. About that Tim was right, and Sasha drifts curiously downwind, because Martin must have summoned these people for some reason beyond irritating the ghosts he doesn’t know he’s cohabiting with. The man in the corridor doesn’t look much like a builder, and would a builder stay the night? So what is he doing?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As it turns out, he is staring not at the mirror, but at the small painting above it, the only thing Sasha has seen in the house with </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>of the inhabitants there - Elias, a little younger than he was before he died, looking solemnly out of the tiny canvas, his neat hands folded over the top of a wooden cane. Sasha waits behind the man’s shoulder. She’s as tall as he is, even a little bit taller, although his hair is longer than hers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he turns around and she is expecting him to melt through her chest, but instead his eyes widen and he flinches bodily, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Ah-” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha looks over her shoulder for something to explain why he frightened so, but there’s nothing there. “Huh-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You must be - be one of the other ones,” the man says, in a voice that stops and starts like a dusty record. He takes his glasses from his nose, breathes on them, and begins to rub his sleeve against one of the lenses; he looks nervous. “My name is - is Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you talking to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um. Should I not be?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is something that might be happiness, if she leaves it untouched long enough, but at the moment Sasha translates it into hatred for Tim, which is what she does most days anyway. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Timothy Stoker!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“My dearest Sasha,” and both Sasha and the man - and Jon - look up to see Tim’s head sticking out from the ceiling into the library above them, just under the chandelier there, “I did tell you.” He’s grinning. “I did </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell </span>
  </em>
  <span>you and I was abused most abominably-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um,” says Jon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is all your fault,” she says. Arms folded, looking up, shoe tapping against the ground. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And </span>
  <em>
    <span>you,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Sasha turns to him and Jon is putting his glasses back on and looking resigned, “I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since 1982 and don’t leave anything out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tim and Sasha lead him around for most of the morning, bickering between each other. Sasha quizzes him up and down about current events and about books and about computers and about London and about music and about whether or not various bands from the seventies are together or apart or dead or on drugs or relevant, and Jon tries to answer as best he can. Tim cuts in occasionally to ask things like - </span>
  <em>
    <span>wait, what’s a Walkman again? - </span>
  </em>
  <span>but apparently this is a stale joke for the ghosts of Blackwood House, and Sasha will swing a playful punch at his shoulder and they will start up again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon is grateful not to be making small talk with Martin, at least, which he can’t bear. Strangers crawl on his skin and look at him like he’s crazy and ask him, delicately, if he’s ever been diagnosed. Martin hasn’t done any of those yet, but - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie and Melanie wake up nearer to mid-morning, and neither seem surprised to find Jon sitting on the landing of the stairs where the two flights connect, chatting to the air about Freddie Mercury. “Found them, then?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least three,” Jon says, focusing on Georgie through the smoke of Tim’s left ear. “Martin is downstairs if you want him. In the kitchen, I think, with Chou.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want breakfast,” Melanie says, rubbing at her eyes, “Does he have breakfast?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>breakfast. Georgie, Melanie,” this last phrase directed to the two ghosts, who have been poking around the girls in experimental interest, as though Jon’s ability will have stretched to them by association. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie makes to keep going down, hand brushing against the top of Jon’s head as she does. “I’ll say hello to Martin, then, for you. Tell them I say hello.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They can hear you,” Jon says unnecessarily. Melanie prods him with her socked foot as she follows, and he smiles at them as they walk down the stairs to go and do the familiarity that he can’t with the man in the kitchen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re not very good ghost hunters if they can’t see ghosts,” Sasha says once they’re gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Seeing </span>
  </em>
  <span>ghosts isn’t the most important point of - of - not of </span>
  <em>
    <span>hunting, </span>
  </em>
  <span>of-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dealing,” Tim suggests, from where he sits balanced on the banisters, his hands on his knees. “Dealing with ghosts. We’ve all been here a tremendously long time, Jon, it isn’t like we have - it isn’t like we’re going to go all squeamish about what we are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, quite,” Jon says. Tucks a strand of hair Georgie tugged loose behind his ear. “Um. So that’s you, and you, and Elias, and - and you mentioned a fourth-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha, chin in her hands, smiles. “You mean Daisy? She’ll be in the gun room. She’s almost as old as Elias. She - values her… privacy. Do you want to meet her?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose I should,” Jon says slowly, and the reason he’s here has almost slipped his mind entirely, “You don’t think she could be-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nope,” Tim says. Perfectly sweet, but firm, solid, a point not to be argued. “No, whatever’s going on with Martin is - new. None of us would do anything like that, I can </span>
  <em>
    <span>promise </span>
  </em>
  <span>- and none of us are corporeal enough, anyway. Not even Sasha, and she’s the youngest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon holds his hands up. “I believe - I believe you, sure. Sure. You must all have incredibly strong tethers, though, but I - ah. Um. Can I - still, can I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll show you the gun room,” Sasha pushes herself into the air, colliding with Tim, who overbalances on the banister with a yelp, “Daisy’ll get a kick out of this for </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Come with me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon can hear voices coming from the kitchen, chatter, conversation, Georgie’s and Melanie’s and a still-unfamiliar male voice that must be Martin’s. Of course it’s Martin’s. He’s expecting Sasha to lead him through the kitchen to wherever this gun room is, but instead at the base of the stairs she turns right, and leads him through the narrow alcove where the far wall doesn’t quite meet the side sweep of the stair. Even here there are pictures, but they’re more modern and less formal than the ones hung upstairs; sepia boat trips, men in yellowing jumpers wearing matching smiles, picnics on a lawn Jon supposes is around the back of the house, a car with three happy children waving out the back window. There’s a door at the end of the stretch, where the stairs climb up and twist onto the second floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gun room,” Sasha says, waving at it. “Daisy - well, we think, but she never said. Never said to - Elias probably knows, but Daisy doesn’t like to talk about it. We think she was killed in here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Killed?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon pulls to a halt, hand near the doorknob. “What makes you say that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim looks, for a moment, troubled. “Just a feeling we have. Don’t mention - well. Just say hello.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With that ominous statement on his shoulders, Jon takes hold of the handle and twists, and the door to the gun room creaks open with badly-oiled hinges to reveal - </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not </span>
  </em>
  <span>a dark, depressing place full of weaponry and evil things and a maudlin ghost. The windows are long and cover almost the entire far wall, which looks out on the curling trees and lawn Jon had seen only briefly from the window of his own room. Something glimmering in the distance; a lake, but whether or not it’s on the property he still can’t figure. Woods, then, past even that, and the glimpse of the mossy-white folly he had seen from his window. In one corner of the room there is a trapdoor - closed, but dust cleared around the handle, as though someone had been trying to open it recently. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What had Martin said? </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And someone yelling from the basement… I felt a hand on my neck… </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The wall that isn’t windowed is lined with forest-green gun cabinets, tall and thin and barred like old school lockers. Each has its own individual padlock hooked onto the door, but there is a fat keyring on the table beside the windows, hung with long, almost-identical silver keys. The walls are hung with straps, leather buckles lined with slugs and pellets, and coarse canvas bags to, presumably, put game in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the table looking out the window is a woman, shorter than Sasha, shorter even than Jon probably, well-built underneath the sort of outfit he would expect the lead in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oliver </span>
  </em>
  <span>to wear, not a striking ghost in a hidden room. Her hair is long and blonde, and her face is sharp and elfin, and she looks around in sort of muted surprise to both Tim and Sasha. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Daisy, this is Jon,” Tim says, reaching forward through Jon’s shoulder to the woman on the table. To Daisy. “He…” His voice dries out, and he looks at Jon with his head cocked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m Jon,” Jon says unnecessarily, and tries not to take a few steps back when she flies off the table to him. “Um-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes are an intensely bright shade of blue, and this close to Jon’s face he feels like drowning in them. Her top teeth dig into her bottom lip and he feels watched - studied, and he knows that she’s watching the widening and focusing of his pupils, on her and nothing else. “How?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um. Um. Wish I knew,” Jon says, backing up and up and up until he’s against one of the cabinets. She’s shorter than him, yes, but the line of her shoulders, the stiffness of her posture is intimidating without much effort. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy looks beside her to the other two. “He can see all of us?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Apparently so,” Sasha says, shrugging, “He saw Elias last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s right, right here,” Jon says. Squares his shoulders. “I can see most spirits, actually - shades, ghosts, um - destructive presences. The works. Pretty useless when you think about it for more than about five minutes, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So Martin thinks a ghost is trying to kill him,” Daisy looks intrigued, which Jon will take over threatening. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One of </span>
  <em>
    <span>us, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Daisy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not necessarily,” Jon hurries to interrupt, “I - well, often there are, are things that even the shades in the vicinity aren’t aware of. Things older. I’ll have to ask Elias if he’s the longest here, but I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>think something is trying to kill Martin, then,” Daisy says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um. Yes. I think so. If he says so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiles satisfied, and Jon is put in mind of the cat slightly after having gotten the cream. “Good. Because something </span>
  <em>
    <span>is.” </span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>again thank you for reading! if you enjoyed please leave a comment/kudo, it means the world. </p><p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p><p>enjoy today's episode! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. With Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>whew. 170 boys, am i right</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[Video ID: A blurry shot of Jon face-down on a dirty sofa. The camera is shaking silently, and we can hear Georgie shushing the person behind it - presumably Melanie. </p><p>“Wait for it,” Melanie hisses. </p><p>The shot is completely silent for a second, and then Jon snores loudly, a prolonged snort that fizzles out into a whistling breath. </p><p>The camera falls and we see a shot of the apartment roof and someone’s foot kicking the floor. The two women are laughing. We hear Jon say: “What? What? What is it? What’s wrong? Hey, why are you-”</p><p>Video ID ends.]</p><p> </p><p>The lake is quite small, really, as lakes go, but it's a lot bigger than your regular pond, and so it’s a lake simply because there isn’t anything else for it to be. Melanie, feeling a little self-conscious about how aware she is of the nettles and the things in the bushes that are buzzing, hangs her shoes on the jetty and dabbles her bare feet into the water, only wincing a little bit at how cold it is. The day is hot but not humid, dry and warm, and as soon as she’s acclimatised to it she feels the cool seeping up her body through her legs, into the core of her. Ah. Country living.</p><p>After a few minutes of idyllic silence Jon comes crashing clumsily through the trees, complaining noisily and without real steam about nature and plants and the devilishness of flies and midges and whatever the tiny black bloodsuckers are. </p><p>“Midges, Jon,” Melanie says, shuffling up on the jetty so he can sit down. He descends with stiff elegance, crossing his legs beneath him so he can perch on the heels of his boots. “Aren’t you gonna get in?”</p><p>He scowls distrustfully at the lake. “Anything could be in there.”</p><p>“It isn’t the bloody <em> Loch Ness. </em>It’s a piddly pond in someone’s garden,” to prove her point Melanie lifts her foot and splashes him, and he scowls through his newly-dampened face, water dripping off the end of his nose. </p><p>“Hmph.” But, unwillingly, he zips himself out of his boots and rolls his socks down his thin ankles, folding them inside the shoes before he lowers his feet into the water. <em> “Fucking - </em>oh my god, Melanie, cold-”</p><p>“Stop being such a baby.”</p><p>“Hmph.”</p><p>They sit in silence for a while, listening to something - a bird, presumably - making a noise in the trees on the other side of the lake. Neither Jon nor Melanie have been outside the city for very much of their lives, and neither Jon nor Melanie have so far discovered a hidden interest for… nature things. Birds. Trees. Things that bite. All the same, both Jon and Melanie feel they have to make at least a half-hearted attempt at the whole countryside thing, just so they can say they’ve tried and go back to the urban jungle where there’s always a chippy within arms’ reach. </p><p>“So. Progress report?”</p><p>Jon tips his head back, squinting in the sudden brightness of the sun through a strip of cloud. “In what regard?”</p><p>“Ghosts. Assassins. Ghost assassins. Our dear client,” Melanie follows suit, her neck aching at the shift in angles; she’s always been a restless sleeper, and despite Georgie’s best efforts Melanie is always stiff for the first few nights of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, even if she ends up mostly sleeping on top of her girlfriend in some twisted position. It’s been four days now since they landed at Blackwood House in the middle of the night, and for any other job they’d be almost done by now, but this has ground to a stagnant halt before it even began, and Martin has remained as apart and awkward as he was when they arrived, and Jon has spent most of his waking hours skulking around talking to the air and to the damn cat in his pocket at random intervals. </p><p>Jon sighs deeply. “No progress. None at <em> all. </em> I just - everyone is lovely, perfectly <em> fine </em>and sane and together. They don’t even particularly want to move on, and most of them are actively - most of them genuinely care about Martin. Their tethers must be strong. Must be incredibly strong for ghosts that old.”</p><p>“Can <em> we </em>do anything?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I don’t - I - I need to know more. There’s something not - <em> clicking </em>here, there’s something not right. Until I know what it is there’ll just be - we’ll be stuck.”</p><p>“Stuck,” Melanie echoes. Something tickles the inside of her foot, against the arch, and she flexes her toes into it. Slippery minnows. Martin says there are trout, apparently, in the river surrounding the property, but she hasn’t made it out far enough to check. </p><p>He makes a noise of frustration. “I don’t <em> know. </em>This house is one big - one big - it’s like wallpaper. Something’s wallpapering something else, but I just don’t know what it is.”</p><p>“Who it is,” she suggests.</p><p>“Who it is, exactly.”</p><p>“Martin seems pretty supportive, anyway,” Melanie says after a moment. “He’s taken pretty much everything in stride. Ghosts, creepy eyes, the lot.”</p><p>“Yes,” murmurs Jon, idly tapping his fingers by the mouth of his pocket so Chou can grab at them, her claws soft still and harmless. “Quite - and doesn’t that strike you as, as, as odd?”</p><p>“Not really. You have to be pretty open-minded to hire us in the first place, wouldn’t you? So he believes in ghosts, Jon, that doesn’t mean <em> he’s </em> the one pushing bricks onto his own head,” Melanie looks askance in his direction, but Jon is still looking across the lake. “This doesn’t mean the whole place is a conspiracy theory. What reason would <em> Martin </em>have to do any of this?”</p><p>“I don’t know! That’s why I say wallpaper, wallpaper over something a lot - a lot - a lot deeper,” Jon splashes, as though to emphasise his point, but he just succeeds in soaking the place where his jeans have been rolled to his knees.</p><p>“I guess I know what you mean, but I don’t think Martin should be-”</p><p>“But none of the others are, either.”</p><p>“But none of us can see them, just you. How do you know-”</p><p>“Trust me, Melanie,” Jon says. He sounds tired, stretched-out, very much at odds with the sun beaming down on him, like he’s been transplanted in from someplace else. Some other time, maybe. “I think I would know by now if any of them were hiding something - I mean - they’ve been following me around constantly for the last four days and all of them seem perfectly happy to talk. Chat. None of them seem at all - I mean, the poltergeists we’ve seen, the shades with negative energy, <em> none </em>of them are as put together as these ghosts. Not even the oldest one is fuzzy around the edges.”</p><p>She takes him at his word because she can’t very well do anything else.</p><p>Jon uses Melanie in a different way to how he uses Georgie. Georgie is a cornerstone, a solid source of sanity (according to Jon) that never changes in his perception, no matter how deeply, how hard, how oddly the thing they’re trying to get rid of is ruining his grip on the real world. But Melanie (again, according to Jon) is an amplifier. Things come through her, not stopping at her, and usually when he’s doing his incantations, his chalks, his muttering like a weirdo, she’s somewhere near him acting like - </p><p>Well, she could probably put it better, but <em> human radio aerial </em>sounds about right. </p><p>“I trust you,” she says, instead of any of that. “My problem with that is that you don’t trust anyone.”</p><p>“I trust you,” he echos, and smiles wryly at her reflection in the lake. “I think that’s enough for me.” </p><p> </p><p>Martin thinks he likes Georgie the most of the three of them, although that isn’t saying much because Georgie is the only one who will talk to him with any surety when he fancies a conversation. Melanie, the smaller one, has poured her energy into exploring the grounds and leaves in the morning and comes back in the evening smelling of soil and mud and worms, and Jon - Jon is <em> weird. </em>He will look at Martin warmly, as though Martin is a friend, and they will chat for five, maybe ten whole minutes at a time before Jon looks at something near Martin but unseen and his face closes down. </p><p>In fact, Martin wonders if Jon knows he’s doing it. If Jon knows how easily-read his face is. If Jon knows he isn’t as aloof as he pretends to be.</p><p>“Mr Blackwood gets me most, though,” he says, lying flat on his bed, staring unseeing at the plaster patterns on the ceiling. “I mean - I <em> told </em>him it annoys me.”</p><p>
  <em> “Did you tell him why, or did you just tell him to call you Martin? Maybe he’s being polite.”  </em>
</p><p>Martin huffs irritably. “I didn’t tell him why because that would be a weirdly - like, intimate thing to say. Exposing all the issues, y’know? I just said not to call me that.”</p><p><em> “Maybe he’s being polite. Just tell him again,” </em>Basira says, all rationality and sense on the other end of the phone. Martin can hear something clicking on the other end of it, and muffled voices; she must still be at the station. </p><p>“I would, but I can’t find him and every time I do he’s talking to a fucking ghost. Supposedly.”</p><p><em> “Supposedly,” </em> Basira says, <em> “So do you think they’re for real or not?”  </em></p><p>“Nothing’s tried to kill me since they arrived. Plus - <em> plus - </em>none of them seem like the sort of people who would mess around… lie about something like this. Even if the whole situation isn’t real, they definitely think it is,” Martin says. His eyes trace around the white plasterwork grapes in the corner of the room, along the edging, and he wonders if whoever made them thought they would be painted. He wonders if whoever installed them actually thought they were tasteful.</p><p>
  <em> “So they’re for real?” </em>
</p><p>“Seem to be.”</p><p>Basira is quiet for a second and Martin can hear tapping closer to the microphone now; she must be doing her own work while she chats. <em> “Talk to them. How much are they charging?” </em></p><p>“Not as much as I thought they’d be, but enough. It isn’t like I haven’t inherited a pot of gold, though - that part of it is fine.” Martin rubs his hand over his face. He can hear Georgie and Melanie in the corridor, but not what they’re saying. “No, it’s just this Jon guy that’s rubbing me the wrong way. And nobody will tell me if they’ve made any progress.”</p><p><em> “Then </em> ask <em> them, Martin,” </em> Basira says. She pauses again, and there’s talking, closer to her desk, something about hospital records and a house fire and the number thirty-one. <em> “Listen, I have to go - text me, okay?”  </em></p><p>“Okay,” Martin says, but Basira has already hung up. </p><p>He lies flat on his bed for a long moment, staring at the grapes, and then he stands up. “If any ghost is in this room, please tell Jon to call me Martin,” he announces, feeling foolish, and he closes the door before any inanimate objects have time to react. </p><p> </p><p>“I still haven’t been in the basement,” Jon says. Elias is in the kitchen, standing rather primly beside the range, looking with judgemental eyes at Tim who’s lying flat on the kitchen table. Sasha has been in the library for the past few days, reading the books and newspapers Jon had been able to open for her, and Daisy, despite all the excitement, tires easily of it all. She’s been in the gun room since yesterday morning. </p><p>“Martin has the only key,” Elias is saying, when the man himself enters the kitchen. “Speak of the devil.”</p><p>Tim looks up to see him in the doorway to the kitchen, pink and slightly breathless. “Hello, Jon,” Martin says, just <em> burning </em>anxious politeness, “Any ghosts around?”</p><p>Although Tim knows he can’t be seen, he waves cheerily in Martin’s direction. Elias makes a small, superior noise. </p><p>“Two, right now,” Jon says. He can make eye contact with Tim very easily, Tim has noticed, and all the other ghosts of the house, but as soon as Jon talks to one of the still-living his eyes tend to drop to the side, or skate downwards, a conversation held with an ear or a shoulder rather than a face. </p><p>“Hello,” Martin waves at the air beside the window, a few feet away from Elias. “Um. Which ones?”</p><p>“Elias and Tim.”</p><p>“Um. Cool.” </p><p>“Ask him for the basement key,” Tim suggests, propping his chin in his palms, “He won’t say no, go <em> on…”  </em></p><p>Jon coughs awkwardly, and the little cat in his pocket pops her head out at the sound, ears upright and curious. “I was wondering - ah, Mr Blackwood, if you would-”</p><p><em> “Please </em>call me Martin,” Martin says. He looks irritable for a second, something Tim hasn’t seen from him before, and he finds it an intriguing look on someone so affable. “I’ll do whatever you want but only if you stop this - Mr Blackwood bollocks. I mean, you’re living in my house. Surely you can say my name.” </p><p>Jon’s cheeks burn darker and his ears go red, which makes Tim want to laugh behind his hand. “Martin, of course. Apologies. I, ah - yes. Apologies.” </p><p>“It’s - it’s fine. I just don’t like it too much,” Martin gives him a tired sort of half-smile, and walks straight through Elias to get to the kettle, which only makes Tim laugh more. “What did you want to ask me?” </p><p>“It’s about the basement. I wondered if I could grab the key, do some - I’ve seen most of the rest of the house, so I guess I wanted to clear all of it. If you don’t - mind.” </p><p>“The basement,” Martin’s hand rests on the handle of the kettle, even after he’s slid it over the range, and Tim wonders if it feels warm and dry on his skin. Warm and dry. “I haven’t tried going down there since… well, yeah. ‘Course you can. Can’t believe there are bits of my own house I haven’t been to yet.”</p><p>Jon offers him a polite little twitched lip, his eyes drifting from Martin to Tim, and Tim shrugs. “I haven’t been down there in years,” he tells Jon, “I get <em> really </em>weird feelings when I go. Like scratching. Like something - I don’t know, but it freaks me out. Sasha, too, and Daisy.”</p><p>“I live down there,” Elias says smoothly, and Tim and Jon turn to look at him. He holds his hands up to his shoulders. “Live - inhabit, whatever you want to call it. I was killed down there, but there haven’t been lights in almost a hundred years, so I don’t know what it looks like. I’ve never had a feeling, but that’s very possibly just proximity. I like to be near my bones.”</p><p>“So you live down there but you can’t see,” Jon lets the words drip slowly out of his mouth, his finger tapping the table in thought. “Why?” And then: <em>“Killed?” </em></p><p>“Someone was killed?” Martin looks horrified, eyes darting around the room like he’ll be able to see the ghosts if only he tries hard enough. “Here? Who?”</p><p>“That’s half of us then,” Tim says, staring hard at Elias. “Daisy, too. You never said you were killed.”</p><p>“It never came up.”</p><p>“That’s a pretty fucking important thing to <em> never come up.”  </em></p><p>Elias holds his arms wide, looking vaguely penitent. “It was a dark room, I was looking for a book to read that night, and I feel a knife in the back, and I come to weeks later with nobody in sight, haunting the basement forevermore. Nobody ever found out who did it in the living world and I couldn’t very well interact with anyone to let them know I remembered nothing about it, either. Knife in the <em> back, </em>Mr Stoker, not in the front where I could look upon the face, or something handy like that. So I never brought it up.”</p><p>“Who?” Martin says again. “Jon-”</p><p>“Elias was killed,” Jon looks distant, and his finger is tapping harder, faster on the wood. “Elias is the oldest ghost. Died-”</p><p>“Eighteen-eighteen,” Elias says. </p><p>“Yeah. Start of the nineteenth century.”</p><p>“Okay, sweet,” Martin looks - pale, and his grip is very tight on the kettle. “Lovely. Love finding this stuff out at random points of the day-”</p><p>“I didn’t know,” Jon says indignantly, leaping right onto the defence. </p><p>Tim looks at Elias, but Elias is only looking at Jon, and if Tim didn’t know him better he would say he looks smug; victorious, almost. But he isn’t. Tim knows him better than that. </p><p>Martin sighs. “I - you didn’t know, fine. Just try and - I can’t <em> see </em>them. I didn’t even know they were real until - you know. It’s not particularly fun to hear. You can leave, but this is my house now. My ghosts now.” </p><p>“I know,” Jon says, and then there’s a beat, and: “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Basement,” Martin says. He pushes the kettle off the ring unboiled, and claps, and he doesn’t look half as enthusiastic as he sounds. “Come with me and I’ll get the key.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not <em> here, </em> Martin,” Georgie says, still with her hand under the flap of the carpet, sweat trickling down the back of her neck. She can hear Melanie clomping around upstairs, pulling drawers open and slamming them shut again, and merrily causing havoc wherever she goes. “Listen - we’ve looked everywhere. <em> Everywhere </em>and it isn’t here.” </p><p>“I had it last week,” Martin insists. He looks as unkempt as Georgie feels, two high spots of pink on his cheeks, hair cobwebby and undone, his shirt covered in little bundles of dust from the cupboard under the stairs. “I <em> had it.”  </em></p><p>“None of them have seen it,” Jon says exhaustedly from where he sits on the stairs, hunched forwards over his knees. Every so often his eyes will soften and unfocus, as presumably one of the ghosts in the room gives him another little morsel of information. “Daisy, are you sure-?”</p><p>Whatever the ghost says seems to follow the rest of the story; he shrugs, slumping forward. “Okay. Thank you.” </p><p>“I had it,” says Martin again, but he sounds a little less sure. “I did - I went down there. I was going to.”</p><p>“Not up here!” Melanie screeches down the stairs, hanging off the banisters from the first floor down to the ground, her boots hooked onto the old wood.</p><p>Jon closes his eyes. “And Elias - no, yes, of course. I’m sorry.” </p><p>Georgie wonders how many are around him right now, how many conversations he’s fielding at the once. She knows they tire him, and he doesn’t look very bright-eyed <em> or </em>bushy-tailed right now, supported mostly by the wooden staircase instead of by any of his own strength. “Elias?”</p><p>“He says he hasn’t seen the key since Martin had it last week,” Jon says quietly. His head is buried in his hands, so all any of the rest of them can see of him are the dark roots of his hair. “None of them have.”</p><p>“Jon-”</p><p><em> “Have you tried looking in your bedsheets,” </em> Jon says, in the hollow voice he assumes when his words are not his own. The sentences that follow are in a string of different accents, a wave of different tones, at least one man and one woman. <em> “No, that’s stupid, don’t you think he would have looked there? Maybe it’s in the bin. Maybe it’s still in his car. Maybe it’s-” </em>he breaks off, rubbing his throat. “Ow.”</p><p>Martin looks conflicted, then, and starts towards Jon with an abortive little movement. “Are you-”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Jon pulls himself to his feet by the staircase, and smiles half-heartedly at Georgie. The cat in his pocket looks out, curious but not alarmed. “I’m going to - library. Second floor. Goodbye.” He shuffles off up the stairs.</p><p>Which leaves Georgie and Martin alone in the entrance hall, Georgie tired and irritable, Martin  looking confused and slightly lost. “Is he always like that?”</p><p>“Jon?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Martin looks up the stairs, frowning. “No?”</p><p>Georgie gives up on hunting and sprawls on the floor, leaning against the wall with her head on the bubbly, damp plaster. “He’s juggling talking to the three of <em> us </em> with talking to four ghosts. He isn’t normally like this because his - we live in a place that was built five years ago. No ghosts there. It takes effort. <em> And </em>he’s a little bit of a wanker the rest of the time, so I guess… sort of?”</p><p>“So it takes effort, then? The ghost thing, I mean.” Martin follows suit, sitting down at the foot of the stairs, and it looks like a rather uncomfortable position with the edge of the first step pressing into the small of his back. </p><p>Georgie shrugs. “As much as anything does. He doesn’t talk about it much, but he - yes, it takes effort.”</p><p>“Huh. I hadn’t realised.”</p><p>“Neither did I for a while,” Georgie forces a smile even though she doesn’t much feel like it, but she thinks at the moment Martin needs friendliness more than he needs three grumpy strangers trudging through his house. </p><p>“He doesn’t seem very hopeful.”</p><p>“He never is.”</p><p>Martin looks at her like if he stares hard enough she’ll change her answer. “Do you think he - do you think there’s something we could do? About the ghosts?”</p><p>“Nothing’s happened since we arrived,” Georgie says, which isn’t really an answer. </p><p>“And as soon as you leave it’ll start up again,” Martin replies. He sounds dully resigned. “Trust me, after the third time the roof of your own house tries to kill you, you get <em> very </em>used to it. Maybe Jon’s chalk-stuff the first night did something, maybe it didn’t, I don’t know - I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel like the house likes me anymore. Maybe that’s a stupid way to think about it, but I can’t help - I can’t stop it, can I? The house or the feeling.”</p><p>Georgie is just opening her mouth to respond to him when, perfectly on cue, there’s a horrible wrenching scream from higher up in the house, drifting down the stairs with urgent terror. “Melanie,” she says, and her lips feel numb, “That was Melanie-”</p><p> </p><p>There is blood all over the library carpet, and Melanie is trembling near one of the corners Sasha likes to sit in, her hands flecked with the stuff, her nose and cheeks patterned as though with bright crimson freckles. Jon is in the corner proper, his whole body crammed into the space, and if Melanie is bloody then he is something beyond that, his hands held out and shaking, his eyes wide and white in his red face. Hysterically, Sasha is put in mind of a film she saw once a few years before she died - she can’t remember the name or anything that happened in it apart from the scene that gave her nightmares for weeks afterward, the girl standing on the stage with her mouth open, splattered in darkish reddish viscosity. Her eyes had been bright. </p><p>Between Jon and Melanie is one of the heavy chandeliers that Sasha so loves to sit underneath, watching the light crystallise on the sofa cushions in the sun. It is embedded several inches deep into the wooden floor beyond the carpet, and all the glass detailing has smashed, leaving a beautiful pattern all around it and - by the looks of things - showering Jon, and possibly Melanie, in a rain of delicate, dangerous shards. </p><p>“Oh my god,” Georgie runs through Sasha’s body, a cat through mist, right to Melanie’s side without caring about the glass her boots crunch through. “Oh my god, Mel - oh my god. Are you okay?”</p><p>“It didn’t get me much,” Melanie says shakily, pressing her wet palms to her jeans, “But Jon-”</p><p>“What the hell,” Tim says under his breath, so only Sasha can hear him. </p><p>“What on <em> Earth,” </em>echoes Daisy, emerging from the floor, Elias coming a mere breath afterward from the office wall, “What - oh, Lord. Did that just fall?”</p><p>“Our poltergeist is back, we can say that much,” Jon says, and he looks up through those dreadfully white eyes and fixes Sasha straight in the face. He must be in pain, he must be, but he isn’t showing it beyond the cuts on his wrists tracing up his forearms, his neck, high on his cheeks, a few on even his forehead. He looks at Sasha and then looks through her, <em>through </em>her and his face changes: “Oh, and Mr-”</p><p>Sasha twists and feels Tim and Daisy do the same, and there is Martin in the doorway looking a particular shade of anguished Sasha didn’t even know it was possible to reach. “Jon,” he says, and steps forward just a little, “Did you see-”</p><p>“Of course I didn’t see,” Jon says roughly. He is wearing canvas shoes, nothing thicker, and when he steps over the fallen chandelier to the two women Sasha can see even his ankles are dusted with glass and cuts and blood on the high cuffs of his socks. “If I had <em> seen </em>I wouldn’t have let it hit me, would I?”</p><p>“But the glass-”</p><p>“I will get the glass. I was reaching for a book, and the thing just fell on me,” Jon touches the tip of the chandelier, the place where the body of it should have attached to the slim, strong chains at the ceiling, if everything was right with the world. “What I want to know is what book I shouldn’t have touched.”</p><p>Sasha looks to the others, to Tim and Daisy and Elias, and sees her own confusion mirrored there. Elias looks almost more emotional than she’s ever seen him, his lip twisted into a frown. </p><p>“Book…” Martin walks through Sasha and she swears under her breath at the second disruption to what thin form she’s able to gather. “What do you mean?”</p><p>Jon sways, then, and as if on instinct Martin holds out his arm to catch him by the elbow. Sasha hears Georgie whispering to Melanie, something about water and a bowl and a damp cloth, but nobody else moves. “Thank you,” says Jon awkwardly, and clears his throat. </p><p>“Book,” Melanie says. She’s holding Georgie’s hand, and the points where her fingers touch Georgie’s skin are white with pressure. </p><p>Jon reaches again, but slowly, for the bookshelf. Sasha has always been the most curious of the four of them - she can’t help herself. She drifts as far forward as she thinks she’ll be able to without Jon mentioning her presence to the others, and as she does she lets her hand trail partially through Martin’s ribcage. </p><p>He shivers. Good.</p><p>The book itself seems nothing special - it’s one Sasha has seen and ignored many times, <em> An Explorer’s Guide to The Varied Wonders of Dartmoor </em>bound in that pale blue cloth so many publishers seemed to favour around the dawn of the nineteenth century. Jon takes it out, leaving bloody thumbprint-whorls on the cover, across the stitching, and nobody seems to care; not even Sasha can bring herself to feel a sting of sadness about it. </p><p>Jon looks very small. </p><p>“Dartmoor,” he says, and seeming not to notice he leans back towards Martin. “Interesting.”</p><p>“Interesting why,” Georgie says tightly, from the sofa she’s set Melanie down upon. “Jon, can’t this wait-”</p><p>“Perhaps it can, but I’d like not to risk it if I possibly could.”</p><p>“But you’re covered in-”</p><p>“I’ll still be covered in it in five minutes, but then at least we’ll know what it didn’t want me to know,” Jon snaps, and then he shuts his eyes and breathes very slowly and deeply. “I’m - sorry. Sorry. But I want to do this now.” </p><p>“Do it, then,” Daisy says quietly, the only one in the room to make a noise. Jon looks up at her and smiles very soft, and very private, and nobody else speaks a word. </p><p><em> “For you, in the hope it will enhance your dreary walking,” </em>Jon reads aloud from the inner page, and all the ghosts but Elias press inward to take a look - Daisy moves closest, oddly for her, so her shoulder mingles with Martin’s hand on Jon’s arm, so the length of her hair dips into Jon’s body. Sasha and Tim jostle for space reading upside-down, but really nothing can be gleaned from the statement that Jon hasn’t said; it’s written in elegant, but masculine script, with dried ink flowing up and down the words in the particular manner that some expensive fountain pens keep to them. </p><p>“I recognise that writing,” Daisy whispers. </p><p>Jon looks up at her, quickly, and then back down to the book. Sasha turns to ask Elias if he recognises it too, this being around his era and everything, but when she looks over her shoulder he is gone, with only a whisper of colder air to show he was ever there at all. </p><p>“It’s dated,” Martin points out, nodding towards the top-right corner. “Look. 1814 - that’s <em> old. </em>Properly old.”</p><p>"Go on then - what's special about it?" Georgie says sharply from the sofa, her arm still around Melanie.</p><p>Jon turns a few leaves, and his face turns from curiosity to a frown. "N-Nothing. There's nothing here. Just a map of - of walking routes around Dartmoor... <em> contents... </em> it's what it says it is. <em> Flora, Fauna, Geology, Unique Curiosities - </em>that's all, that's-"</p><p>"Give," Martin says, not unkindly, and he eases the book out of Jon's hands. Sasha and Daisy and Tim are mingled completely now, the three of them sharing limbs without a care, and this is the most interesting thing that's happened to Sasha since the accident for <em> sure. </em>If she could still breathe, she would be holding it.</p><p>Martin holds the book out over the space where the glass is, two fingers gripping by the spine, and he shakes it up and down, side to side, disrupting the jagged knife-split edges of the paper that Sasha is sure hasn't been read since it was gifted. Small flurries of dust distil from the corners, and then there is the sound of something sliding down, and a few slim pages fall from between the pages, slipping to the ground like leaves in the autumn. They are smaller and of a different colour to the rest of the book, yellower, folded in the centre, and it's obvious they aren't just book-pages shaken loose of binding over the years.</p><p>"Didn't any of you ever hide a diary from your parents?" Martin says into the quiet. He laughs, but it's the sort of laugh you make only because no other sound seems appropriate.</p><p>"I recognise that writing," Daisy whispers again. "Jon-"</p><p>"Thank you," Jon says, and if Sasha didn't know any better she would think he was talking to Martin, but he's staring right at Daisy. "Yes, I - I think I could go for that - well. I think there are bits of glass in my - everywhere, basically. I-" he stoops, Martin still holding onto him, and collects the fragile pages in a bundle, folding them along their learned centre line and tucking them into his pocket. "I think I'll borrow this book, if you don't mind. Um - Martin."</p><p>"Of course not," Martin sounds odd. "Glass. Uh - kitchen. Melanie, Georgie, come on - god, I'm sorry, I'll get some hot water going-"</p><p>The three ghosts trail after them.</p><p>What else is there to do?</p><p> </p><p>Daisy recognises the writing, Jon thinks, and although the paper is thin and light he feels weighed down absurdly by it as Martin helps him down the few steps to the kitchen through the dining room. Georgie is ahead of them with Melanie, and the kettle is already set on the range, along with a few ceramic bowls and some coloured cloths of the sort used to dust with, soaking in clear cups. Melanie is sitting by the table, her hands buried in a bowl, the water reddish and pink as blood drifts off her hands; Martin makes Jon sit opposite her, and slides an identical bowl beside him. "Hands. I'll get your - your face, if you'll let me-"</p><p>Jon is somewhere past tired and hurtling towards exhausted, so he doesn't say anything, just turns the cheek that hurts the most towards Martin. It will scar, of course it will, and he isn't looking forward to a thousand little pockmarks over his face, over his visible skin, because how on Earth can you explain something like that away? "Whatever you like."</p><p>"I hope that letter was worth it," Georgie says. Jon has his eyes closed so Martin can soothe the blood away from his face, but he can hear her dabbling her hands in some of the warm water on the range, and the splattering noise of water being wrung from a cloth.</p><p>"It will be," Jon says. He hopes the ghosts have followed them down.</p><p>"I know where I recognise it," Daisy whispers very close to his ear, and if he wasn't so tired Jon would have leapt a foot in the air. "I used to - I lived around this house, when I was alive. I think I’ve seen letters from someone like that before-"</p><p>Jon waves his hand low in the air. "I'll go to bed early tonight," he says to the room at large, "I think - I have a lot of learning to do. About the history of this place."</p><p>He hopes she hears what he's saying. Melanie and Georgie he trusts with his life, and Martin is hard to hold a grudge against when he looked so frightened in the library, but Jon isn't a complete fool. What's that saying? The walls have eyes?</p><p>"Are you going to read it?" Martin asks him quietly. His hands are very soft on Jon, one hand on his chin and the other padding at his cheek, and every few seconds there's a break and a fumble and the tinkling splash as another fragment of glass falls into the bowl of water on the table. "To us, I mean."</p><p>Jon cracks his eyes open - Martin is close to him, and this near he can see how emptied-out he is, how dark the bruises are under his eyes. "Do you want me to?"</p><p>"I think I do."</p><p>"So do I," Melanie butts in. "I mean, Christ, what if this is <em> it, </em>Jon? Our spooky criminal?"</p><p>"Then they're a <em> lot </em>more dangerous than we thought. I mean - that's corporeality, what happened to the glass. Who knows how much agency they have? How much can they touch?" Jon closes his eyes again; the sight of the bloody water makes his stomach churn.</p><p>"Read the letter, Jon."</p><p>"I was - I will-"</p><p>"I'll get it," Martin takes his hand from Jon's chin and he feels bereft of the warmth of it, and there's a tug on one side of his jacket as Martin's questing fingers seize on the folded letter. "Here - yes. Okay. Jon, do you want - or will I-"</p><p>"Please," Jon says quietly, holding out the hand that hurts the least. When he looks at it, at least he can't see any sort of <em> deep </em>injury, just many, many fracturing small ones, like a hundred papercuts all at once.</p><p>He clears his throat, splaying his hand over the paper to smooth it, and although he doesn’t notice, Martin does; the way his voice changes, the way his stammer (not pronounced but always <em> present) </em>vanishes, replaced by a mild-mannered confidence in his tone that so far he had completely lacked. </p><p>Briefly, before he begins, he smiles at Martin, and it hurts his mouth only a little to move it, and he can’t taste so much blood. “My dearest,” he says, still looking up, but then he has to flicker back to the paper and he misses the reddening of Martin’s ears. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> July 1814 </em>
</p><p>
  <em> My dearest,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I hope at this time I find you better than you were when last I left you, for it will not surprise you to know you have been ever on my mind since our meeting in March, though I know it will vex you to hear it, rather than the opposite. Still, I must tell you! It brings me a small pleasure to imagine your fury at being so distant from me as that your reprimand cannot reach, and so I will exist in pleased ignorance of your scoldings.  </em>
</p><p><em> I confess, I do not write only to tease. Since my previous letter a great deal has occurred here, and although most of it has no consequence (see: I </em> <em> do </em> <em> learn from your complaints of fluff and reporting!) I fear this will be less preferable to you than the alternative.  </em></p><p>
  <em> To put it plainly - but do not be alarmed, for all is still at present, or I would not have time to write - two days ago, that is, Saturday the 16th - I received a distressing visit from M. This in itself was cause enough to arouse me, as it will take no reminding you that he and I have been at odds in the past, especially given the hand you yourself were wont to play in these particular fractures within our society. You may imagine my surprise, then, to have him knocking on my door almost a half-hour after I had retired, and long after the sun had made her bed.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He told me something I have been plagued by ever since, although I cannot make sense of it for bewilderment. I have written to R. but in the meantime I turn to you and I confess myself much dismayed, even as I write. During the process of this, I have taken many breaks, for my mind cannot settle for very long, and had the summer rains not been quite so heavy I would be pacing the lawns, for I grow restless if I sit at my writing-desk for long enough to dash a sentence off. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>M. </em>
  <em>told me a story laden with discrepancies and I could not keep him to question him further, as a great fog clouded the estate on the night of the 16th and into this mist he vanished. He told me (and I write to you for this reason) of your own activities, although he was between fury and deep distress so often I found it difficult to understand. What was clear to me was mention of ritual, and of things unchristian, and M.’s surety that you were in immediate danger. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> No sooner did I press him for detail than he left, citing a need to see A. and inform him of the same. I would have left them had J. not written to me that very night not an hour later, telling me he had spoken to both you and to M., and that the danger was less present than M. would have led me to believe.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> As I write I expect note or news from R. at any moment, if not him in person. As it is I grow anxious, more than even you could guess, and I urge you to write to me as soon as you receive this.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I remain ever yours in heart and mind, and ever your servant,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> With love,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Your Barnabas </em>
</p><p>“Your Barnabas,” Jon says again, in his own voice this time. He feels as though something momentous has just passed him by, and that he’s being incredibly obtuse not to realise it. “I - oh, Christ.”</p><p>Georgie plucks the letter from his hand, and there’s the noise of paper being quietly folded and pressed into a pocket. “Go to bed,” she says, a lot kinder than five minutes ago. “We can talk about - we can think about it in the morning.”</p><p>“Quite,” Jon lets Martin press a few overlapping fabric plasters to his knuckles, although the cuts have all almost completely stopped bleeding by now, shallow as they were. </p><p>And: </p><p>“Good night, Jon,” Martin says, when they’re at the top of the stairs and hovering between their two eye-chalked doorways, “I - sleep well. I’m sorry.”</p><p><em> “You </em>didn’t drop anything on me,” Jon says, but Martin looks serious and he isn’t as cruel as all that. “Thank you for the - thank you for all of that. I promise I won’t get blood on your sheets.”</p><p>“Jon-”</p><p>But Jon has already slipped through his bedroom door, to see who he expected there; Daisy sitting cross-legged on his bed, her hands on her knees, looking troubled in the glow of the setting sun through the curtains. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p><p>please comment/kudo if you enjoyed x</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Folly of Who</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>whew 171 reminded me how horrible pasta-squishing noises are</p><p>enjoy this one! (and if u normally skip the vid-id intros, i would recommend,,, not doing that from here on in. for. um. definitely not for mystery reasons.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: A news broadcast from BBC Spotlight. It is dated 19th March 1997. A woman in a dark blue dress looks directly at the camera; she is in her mid-forties, with her brown hair tied up on top of her head, and a serious expression on her face. “Good evening,” she says. “The news at six.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shot changes to an overhead view of some trees, with a wide silver river threading between them. At the trees there are three police cars and one orange Land Rover parked by a jetty into the river, and there are several groups of people standing around. A boat has been pulled up the riverbank. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The top headline this evening: Devonshire police and local residents have been searching the woods and rivers surrounding the historic Blackwood House for the last two days in an ongoing search for missing student and tourist, Elias Bouchard.” We see the woman again, looking severely into the lens, before the screen fades to a picture with the subtitle </span>
  <em>
    <span>Elias Bouchard - 33. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Elias is a smiling man with a long nose and defined jaw, grey at the temples, his features whip-smart. His eyes are brown.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr Bouchard was a postgraduate researcher, having graduated in 1992 from Oxford with a degree in PPE, currently working to complete his doctorate with the University of Bristol. He came to the house between four and five in the evening on the sixteenth of March; the next day, he missed a check-in with the university, and the alarm was raised. Local authorities remain positive Mr Bouchard will be found. And now, a look at what high street shutdowns mean for this town in Cornwall. Our local correspondent reports.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“His name was Mordechai,” Daisy says quietly. Her hand is inside Jon’s on the bedsheets, overlapping pale skin through dark, and as he lies there propped up on his pillows with Chou sleeping on his chest, he thinks there’s very little difference between this and a sleepover. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His name was Evan, </span>
  </em>
  <span>giggling, popcorn and marshmallows, and then Chou makes a little mrow-ing noise in her sleep and wriggles further underneath her paws and Jon feels very silly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mordechai,” he echos. “A Blackwood?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I don’t think so,” she says, and frowns. “People called him Lukas, but he - he didn’t live here, you must understand. He was here a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but they all were.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sounds distant, a voice through several centuries remembering things she hasn't thought of in years. "There were - oh, several, ten or twenty of them, but there were five or six main ones that </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>saw. Apparently I arrived quite late - I was born in 1834, you see, and Mordechai was well into his middle age by then, very grey around the top of the head, you know. There were some others, and their names were - their names were - oh, one was Wilhem, I remember that, and he spoke with such a funny accent. Me and my brother would make fun of it. There was a doctor, doctor... something-shaw, I think, and a few others. At the time I was alive there wasn't a Blackwood in the house, you see - there had been some accident here, some years before I was born, and the family all at that time lived somewhere north of Birmingham and had no inclination to come down to the house."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"An accident," Jon echos. He wishes he could touch her. Daisy is almost invisible, so wispish is her form, even outlined as she is in the lamplight by the bedside table. "So how did Blackwoods come to live here, then?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was old Florence's father that brought them back to the house - he was Albert Blackwood, the second son, I think, and he brought his wife and - oh, six, seven children here. One of them was how Tim came to the house," and here Daisy smiles a little, "He was very small when he first visited. It was his brother who was the main attraction, but Tim came too, and - well. Then Florence got the house, and then she died, and the Blackwoods must have vanished in the meantime. I don't know the details as much as Tim does. Or Sasha, actually."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's okay. That's fine. I..." Jon moves his hand up so his fingertips dip into her wrist. "Mordechai?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh. Oh, of course." Daisy looks at him briefly. "I was - I died in sixty-one. Eighteen, that is. I didn't used to be like this."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like-?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs hollowly. "Nice, I suppose. I used to be - I was a poacher, you know. In the woods around this estate mostly, and then up on the moors a little bit, but it was always easier to get to the Blackwood estate, and closer to home. I lived in the village. A little ways out of the village, I mean, and when I was very small my father died. Not of anything malicious, just - he just died of being around for too long, I suppose. There was me and three boys under me, and it was - I don't want to pretend it was nice, but it wasn't bad. We used to knot butterfly-catchers from the rushes in the field and catch moths when it was grass time, and they let us feed the calves that didn't suck, and they were always hailing on me to help with the lambing." She raises her slim hand and wiggles her fingers in the air, covered in criss-cross scars. "Small hands, you know."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes," says Jon, although he doesn't.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well. And I was... I don't know, actually. From when I was very little I liked to watch the men hunting. The men up </span>
  <em>
    <span>here, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I mean. Like I said I was born after the accident, but they must have been close to whoever lived in the house before, because that big one - that Mordechai - he had a key, and they were always tramping up here with their guns and their big jackets, and the pheasants were so fat and sleepy even I could have shot one. I could probably have caught one and wrung it before it saw me coming," she laughs again and this time she sounds merrier, and her smile is genuine, and Jon sees something pretty underneath the hard set of her face. "You know?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes," says Jon again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Although again, he doesn't.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was - my brothers and I grew up very fast, and I had an uncle but it - it was a big ask, you know, making him feed the four of us and my mother, and so I - when I was eleven or twelve I was already catching littler things. Rats and frogs and mice. I could mix up a glue, you know, the stuff you make with tree sap, and if you paint the branches in it and come down in the morning you have the pickings of any bird you want. I used to want a heron, but of course they wouldn't be in trees - still, I wanted one. And the stream around the estate is full of trout and it was back </span>
  <em>
    <span>then, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and oh, I wanted a fishing-rod so badly. I tried my best, but I - I stole a gun. Yes, I stole a gun."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The room I live in," she smiles at him, "The room I </span>
  <em>
    <span>stay </span>
  </em>
  <span>in. The gun room. It's been the gun room as long as I've known the place, and as I say, Mordechai had a key but he didn't live here full-time. I broke in and stole one when I was oh, I couldn't have been older than fifteen, and I - I was a good hunter. I was the </span>
  <em>
    <span>best </span>
  </em>
  <span>hunter. The woods around here I knew already and I didn't... I wasn't bound by the season, none of that nonsense, so I just came when we needed something and I left. You know. You know?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes," repeats Jon, and this time he thinks he does. Chou knocks into his chin with her head, sleepy and disoriented, and he strokes a finger down her spine distractedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So this went on for years and years, and I got bolder and bolder. More... jumpy. It wasn't enough just to hunt the things; I started coming into the woods when Mordechai and his friends were here, just for the - the rush, I suppose, of knowing I had killed something right under their noses, and that I was going to take it home and feed my family on something that they probably never gave another thought to. I never thought - I. Well, I was reckless and stupid and I was </span>
  <em>
    <span>caught. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He was so big," Daisy puts her hand on and into Jon's arm, "His hand - he could wrap it all around my bicep. I was strong, you know? I was strong. I was a hunter. I was the best hunter in the whole village, in the whole surroundings, and this massive - this Mordechai just had me by the shoulder like I was, like a - like how cats bring things to doorsteps. He pulled me back up to the house, you see. He was going to call the police, he told me, but first he was going to - to teach me a lesson."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Surely not-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, god no," Daisy covers her mouth with her hand, eyes crinkled up with horrified mirth, like the thought had never crossed her mind, "No, but he put me in this... in the upstairs office, it must have been. You know, beside the library? Have you been there yet? It doesn't matter. He put me there and he said he would come back when he thought I had learnt my lesson and he locked the door."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon says nothing as the cat plays with his hair loose around his ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I thought he would come back in a few hours but it - oh, it must have been days. Days - certainly three days, maybe four. I was hungry, but I was - I opened the window so I could lick the dew off the panes, and on the second day it rained and so that - that helped, of course. But I was - I was very weak. One of the things I did there was explore, because I thought... well, I thought in a big old house perhaps there would be a secret door, you know? Someplace hidden, someplace he would have me work out how to get free by, and that this was a test. And I found... letters. And-" Daisy stops and frowns. "I didn't mean to tell you all this. I'm sorry-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't be," he rushes to say, and doesn't mention the thrumming blood under his skin, the adrenaline of a new story told to him by a spirit nobody else can see. "It's perfectly all right. Letters?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"In the same handwriting as that one," Daisy nods her head to Jon's pocket, although Georgie still has the note. "I don't... I mean, I can't actually... I didn't know what it really said. But I'm not </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I recognised the writing as soon as you pulled it out."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thank you," Jon says softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chou purrs, and it's the only sound in the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy sighs. "I'll tell you how it happened, if you like."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Only if you-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>you wanting to ask."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I fell out the window," she says, in the sort of voice as hard as a greystone wall. "I opened it on the fourth morning to try and lick the panes again, and I felt - it was like a hand on my back, I would swear it, and I hadn't had anything to eat. So I just </span>
  <em>
    <span>fell. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Right through the glass and onto the stone and when I woke up I was in the gun room and Elias was there, and I didn't see Mordechai again."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” says Jon, and Chou lifts her head and tries to walk onto Daisy’s shoulder and falls right through her onto the bed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jon, calm down, have a biscuit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a letter in the office somewhere, probably more than one,” Jon is saying, and he’s pulling at the end of the plait he’s put his hair into and Martin can’t stop looking at it. His knuckles are red and brown with scabbed cuts, and his cheeks are covered in plasters, and he is a ball of frantic movement on the jetty, completely at odds with the still lake and the folly in the woods beyond the other shore and the packet of biscuits Melanie is shaking at him. “We need to be looking for it, we need to be searching, we need to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be eating because otherwise we will fall in the lake and die,” Georgie interrupts in the most deadpan voice Martin has ever heard. She reaches for Jon’s belt and pulls him to sprawl sitting beside Melanie, and shoves a ginger nut into his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up about ghosts for five minutes,” Melanie sighs, lying splayed out in the sun with her arm over her eyes. “Martin, this place is </span>
  <em>
    <span>glorious. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You could rent it out for summers. I bet the Londoners would wet themselves about out here all to themselves for a month or so.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Forget them, that’s what I’m doing,” he says. The sun is warm against his calves, his arms, all the places where bare skin hits air; today is finally hot enough to crack out the shorts. He squints towards the folly in the distance. “I really should explore the place, someday soon. Would you come with?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Absolutely,” Melanie says with satisfaction. “Martin, will you marry me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Absolutely.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie leans over Jon to swat Melanie gently on the side, and they descend into pleasant bickering. Jon looks hunted, nibbling on his ginger biscuit, and Martin thinks the whole thing is a lot sweeter than - as a general rule - things have tended to be in the last week or two. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe even murderous invisible ancient ghost things give them a break. A filler arc. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The grounds are a lot bigger than I thought they would be, you know. I found a map of them in that gun room, beside the basement, and they go from… oh, there’s absolutely miles of wood in that direction,” Martin waves his hand vaguely behind him, “And then beyond this lake there’s all those little silly garden decorations. Grecian temples, that sort of thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re called follies,” Jon says suddenly, around the last crumbs of the scone. He smiles, a little embarrassedly, as though he’s been caught knowing something he shouldn’t. “You know in those silly… things on the Beeb. They always take a turn around the room and houses always have follies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is struck with the mental image of Jon, possibly with the two women or possibly on his own, Chou on his lap and a blanket around his shoulders watching </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sense &amp; Sensibility. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He wonders if Jon is the sort of person to talk at the screen, like Martin does; when they make silly decisions in those shows, Martin can’t help but talk at the thing, as though Colin Firth will hear him through both time, space, and a screen and make a different turn this time around. He ducks his head to hide his smile. “Like in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Midsomer Murders.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, god, and if anyone has some boring garden ornament you just know that’ll be where the murder happens,” Jon sits a little forward, warming to his subject, “And it’s always done with some… like, rusty shears or something. And it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>the vicar.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I think I got ordained once online,” Melanie says lazily, squinting up into the sun. “You get me a dog collar and a nice black shirt and I’ll be your vicar for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think then we might all be struck down from on high,” Jon prods her side. “No, Martin’ll have to be the vicar. He’s a friendly local.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m more local than you lot by a month, if even,” Martin cuts in to defend himself. “I did live in London until </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>recently-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon holds his finger to his lips, his eyes crinkled. “You’re rustic, Martin, don’t ruin it. You pronounce your </span>
  <em>
    <span>rs. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You - you… farm, and know things about grass, and… cows. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Trouble at mine.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d make a terrible Poldark.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, I’m the city detective-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But that means I’m the victim of the murder!”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No, </span>
  </em>
  <span>you’re the clever local who’s helping me with my inquiries!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I’m Georgie,” says Georgie, and Martin and Jon make eye contact and burst into silly, contented laughter. In the trees above and around them, something rural makes a rustling noise, and in the stream there are trout. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Melanie and Jon cook, arguing about who gets to have which knife, who gets to stand at the counter and who at the range, who gets to do the bacon and who gets to do the mushrooms. Chou has taken to climbing out of Jon's pocket, up his jumper (plucking holes in the fine wool) and onto his shoulder, where she sits happy as anything, wiping a paw over her small face and over his ear by association. She likes the smell of bacon, anyway, and probably the taste, but Jon has been keeping her well away from the raw meat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie and Martin are in the study on the second floor, tucked in at the library - Jon had obediently passed on Daisy's information, or at least, the stuff that he thought was relevant, searching the place for more letters from whoever Barnabas is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You should do it in butter instead of oil," says Sasha, from very close to Jon's other shoulder, "It tastes so much better. That's what we used to do."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wouldn't know," Tim pipes up immediately afterwards, and when Jon looks over his shoulder the ghost is lying in the air with his arms behind his head, "We had servants to do those sorts of things, Miss James."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, shut up," Sasha grabs his ankle and pulls upwards so Tim goes tumbling through the empty space, passing halfway through the wall before he catches himself and steadies. "Jon, do it in butter. Please?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sasha says do it in butter," Jon repeats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie looks behind both shoulders, and then smiles stiffly, tucking a little strand of dyed hair behind her ear. "How many ghosts are here right now?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Only the two," Jon says, and makes a face at Sasha, "The two </span>
  <em>
    <span>most annoying </span>
  </em>
  <span>ones."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha makes a face right back, but she's smiling and when Tim clambers back to stand a little way above the stone floor, they're both giggling; it's an infectious sort of sound that wriggles into Jon's shoulders and he can feel the corners of his own mouth twitching, twitching.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie smiles at the air a little between Sasha and Tim. "Well, then. Hello, ghosts."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They say hello," Jon says, although neither of them have.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tell her she looks fit," Sasha says with another laugh, and she goes falling into Jon at the shove Tim gives her. "Oi!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tell Melanie I would be honoured to take her to dinner, only I-" Tim goes down with Sasha, swearing, "Tell her I am being attacked by an </span>
  <em>
    <span>uncouth </span>
  </em>
  <span>young-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They're wrestling on the floor right now," Jon informs Melanie, who is grinning now, hand curled over her mouth, a mushroom in her fist. "I think it's flirting, but I wouldn't like to assume."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fuck you, Jon-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, fuck you-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Please go away if you aren't going to be helpful," Jon says, but he makes sure to inject enough joke there that neither of them can take it seriously. Once he said something similar to a spirit, albeit one with a much fainter grip on the world, and it extended the commission by the several weeks it took to make her stop crying every time she saw his face. He still feels lingering guilt about that one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim looks about to retort, but Sasha just kisses the patch of air beside Jon's cheek and tugs him through the wall to the dining room. He can hear them through the house if he really focuses, calling for Daisy and Elias to go and follow the others and see if they've got any more entertainment, both as happy as each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie wipes at her cheek, where the pan has spat butter. "If I didn't know you any better I'd say you were having fun here."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Me? Having fun? I would never do something so low," Jon says seriously, but his smile breaks when she pushes him. Chou makes a small angry noise at having been disturbed, and her blunt claws press into his jumper for grip. "Oh - of course I could do without the, the getting things dropped on me and finding glass embedded in my </span>
  <em>
    <span>face, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and the thing trying to murder the - Martin, but apart from that? I mean. These are the most solid ghosts I've met in years. Their tethers must be incredibly strong."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There you go off again, </span>
  <em>
    <span>tethers. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tethers to what?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You should watch this really great channel. It's called </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ghost Hunt UK-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She prods him again. "Shut up, I do all the editing. I mean - I don't actually-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's nothing too complicated. I don't even know if that's the name for them," Jon scoops the thinly-cut red onion into the pan, where it hits the sizzling butter and bacon and mushrooms with a pleasantly loud hiss. "I just - like, Chou was Myriam Barratt's tether, you know? The thing keeping her in this world. On this side of the veil."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you think every ghost here has, what? A </span>
  <em>
    <span>super-kitten </span>
  </em>
  <span>keeping them here?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tethers don't have to be living things, although most of them are," Jon allows. He steps back a little so Melanie can have full access to the range, to the two small pans boiling potatoes and vegetables from the garden to go with the rest. "I mean... that's why so many things </span>
  <em>
    <span>we </span>
  </em>
  <span>deal with - or so much of the stuff on the channel, anyway, is so intense."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"If a tether dies the spirit goes nuts?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Pretty much."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wonder what mine would be, if I was a ghost."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Probably Georgie," Jon says, sliding into the chair nearest him, "Or... me, I guess. Ghosts don't tend to choose their tethers."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you think... what, the ones here are just super strong?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't know what I think. There's so much - </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit </span>
  </em>
  <span>in the way of it. I can't see clearly at all. I mean... who knows what that letter was about? Daisy said - Daisy said something about a guy called Mordechai, and I suppose that could be the </span>
  <em>
    <span>M </span>
  </em>
  <span>Barnabas was talking about, but who's everyone else? And who's he writing to? I haven't found Elias since it - since it all happened, or I would ask. I think he died here around that time."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Elias," Melanie says thoughtfully, turning to lean against the range, "That's the old one, right?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon nods. "He's not as... present as Sasha is, or Tim, but that isn't for lack of strength. He's just as focused as they are, but I think he doesn't care about the... real world, the living, as much as they do. It's like Daisy."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Gun room ghost."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Gun room ghost, exactly. She's not so... here all the time, but she's hardly see-through at all and... you can really feel it when any of them pass through you," Jon clings to his wrist with his hand, the fingers looped around it, rubbing his thumb over the dotted glass-cuts there. "I don't know. It's all... weird."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tangled."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Exactly, and I wish I knew how to </span>
  <em>
    <span>untangle </span>
  </em>
  <span>it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You will," Melanie pats his head with the hand not all oily from cooking, "And if you don't, Georgie will just... beat everything up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs at that because it's either laugh or worry himself sick, and Jon honestly isn't sure which one he's closest to doing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The day began beautiful and warm, and now it's stretching out into the afternoon it's almost unpleasantly so, sticky and oppressive on Martin every time he ventures out of the kitchen or the cold room where he seems to be spending most of his time. He's shed all his layers but one, a t-shirt Basira bought for him last year, a silly piece of merchandise for a band he liked when he was doing his GCSEs, and he wishes he had a box of ice lollies, or one of those soft-serve Mr Whippies from the vans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just another thing the countryside doesn't have that London has in abundance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Penny for them?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks up from his phone to see Jon in the doorway of the kitchen, smiling gently at him, Chou balanced on his shoulder, rubbing the side of her head against his ear. "Huh?" He says stupidly, and then he wants to die a little bit inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Penny for your thoughts, I mean."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin grins and feels even stupider. "Nothing much. Nothing at all. Just thinking about... how hot it is, I guess. I'm not built for anything over about ten before I start melting."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, god, me neither," Jon moves further into the kitchen, away from the heat of the range and towards the side door instead; when he passes Martin, Martin gets a hint of shower-gel, masculine and floral. He wonders what brand Jon uses, and decides it's very creepy even to think it, and wishes he could stop thinking about it now it's arrived in his brain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks perfectly happy in the weather, although that's probably - Martin thinks disparagingly - because he isn't wearing a novelty t-shirt and perspiring heavily. He's in jeans, either the same pair as always or in a pair identical to his usual, but in a nod to the weather he's wearing a pale yellow t-shirt with the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>frog </span>
  </em>
  <span>on the front in lowercase sans-serif. The shirt is a little too big for him, but not foolishly so, just big enough that with Chou sitting on him the collar is pulled to one side and Martin can see just the littlest hint of his shoulder, of the base of his throat, of the tip of his collarbone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Stop staring.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon clears his throat, smiling a little still. "Um. Well - if it isn't too hot for you, do you fancy coming into the woods with me today? Daisy told me something - something, a few days ago, and I don't really want to... to explore alone. If you don't mind. The girls are busy," he hastens to add, and Martin's battered pride takes another hit, "There's stuff to do with the channel and the podcast... back in London, I mean. I guess they're seeing how much stuff we can do remotely, but-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll explore with you," Martin interrupts before Jon can continue. "I'll... sure. I guess I haven't been around it either, so it can't hurt..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks relieved, as though there was ever a chance Martin would say no. "Um. Sure, exactly. It can't hurt."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They take the side door out of the house, instead of winding through the dining room to the front hall, and Jon waits leaning against the windowsill for Martin to wriggle into his wellingtons, hot as they are around his calves. He seems softer today, and it takes Martin an embarrassing amount of time to realise that it's because he's kept his hair down, brushing his shoulders and giving Chou brown curtains to hide herself within. Martin wants to point it out. Wants to tell Jon it looks good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, he doesn't. He doesn't want to do that. That would be weird.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They walk side by side across the crunchy sandstone-and-gravel drive, past Martin's sad Ford Fiesta and the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ghost Hunt UK </span>
  </em>
  <span>van, both abandoned since they arrived; Georgie has taken to running to the village and back for things like milk and butter and eggs and cheese, and they haven't run out of anything so rare as to warrant a trip to the big Asda twenty minutes ago. In silence, but for Chou's happy purring, they dive into the clutching trees that line the lane, and Martin strikes slightly ahead, aiming for a part of the woods he hasn't been to yet, away from the well-worn track to the jetty there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you know how far it goes?" Jon asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shrugs. "Sort of. I know how many </span>
  <em>
    <span>acres </span>
  </em>
  <span>it is, but I don't actually know what an acre is, and the - the solicitor met me, see, to give me all the deeds and stuff, and I didn't really want to ask her at the time, and I keep forgetting to Google it. I know it goes as far as the road on the other side, and there's the lake and a few... dwelling spots, I guess, marked on the map, but I haven't actually been out as far as any of them."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Dwelling spots?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like, you know on OS maps, those black squares? Those. There's one in the woods I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>is that folly thing, the fake temple, and there's one the solicitor told me doesn't exist anymore because it was knocked down in, like, the eighteen-fifties. There's probably a few others, I think? But I haven't been to any of them."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks intrigued. "That sounds - I saw the folly from my bedroom window, but I hadn't realised there was more."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't think there really is," Martin shrugs again, wildly uncomfortable with thinking about how much </span>
  <em>
    <span>stuff </span>
  </em>
  <span>he really has now, "I think the folly might be the only thing still standing. Useless garden furniture, really."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think they're sweet."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You </span>
  <em>
    <span>would. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Mister-Rustic-Detective."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon grins at him, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, looking younger than he usually does and far more at ease. "Thanks for the stunning review, my Noble Sidekick."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hey-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think we all know which one of us is the Watson and who is the Holmes, between the pair of us," Jon says, kicking a thick spot of ferns by the base of a tree. "You can go and smile at people, and they'll tell you pertinent information, and then I'll go - go be condescending at you and it'll all be a happy ending."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin laughs and Jon joins him and it feels nice - right, balanced, to be in the woods with the birds singing and the sun buttery-yellow through the trees, to have nothing inanimate trying to kill him for almost a whole second day in a row.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, Martin," Jon's hand wraps around Martin's wrist and pulls, and Martin can only hope he doesn't feel the racing pulse under his thumb, "Look - it's that folly - it's a lot closer to the house than I thought it would be-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can see it," Martin says. He smiles again, down at Jon, and his arm feels cold when Jon drops it. "Hey - it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course it doesn't, it's </span>
  <em>
    <span>Regency </span>
  </em>
  <span>stuff," Jon says importantly, but there's a little tinge of humour in his voice. "Come on, let's sit in it and talk about - oh, I don't know. Wickham's engagement with Mary Bonnetface. You know you want to really."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, I do, do I?" But Martin follows him, drawn unstoppably forward, watching Jon with a cat clutching the collar of his t-shirt, bouncing towards the little mock-Grecian temple in the clearing they've found themselves in with an energy he's rarely seen from the man since he arrived. Jon is humming something under his breath - he sounds almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>jolly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is three steps behind him when he hears Jon's intaken breath, and he feels the air drop coolly just as it had when that hand grabbed him in the gun room. He's about to ask what's wrong when he sees it, and of course -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course. Blackwood House won't let them go </span>
  <em>
    <span>five minutes </span>
  </em>
  <span>without a calamity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Resting by one of the steps up to the body of the folly, mossy with a slug clinging undignified to the inside of an eye socket, is a sun-bleached skull. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Wait, no, listen, we don't know who - we should call the police. We should call the police because that is what you </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>when you find a dead body and I don't want to be done for, for, for hiding evidence, or being accomplice to murder, or getting some disease from an unknown skull. We need to call the police," Martin is working himself into a frenzy in the kitchen, pacing back and forth, his phone squeezed between both hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Melanie looks at Jon, though, he's just sitting. Just sitting, and staring at the grains in the table. She wonders what else he might be listening to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We can't call the police, Martin," Georgie says patiently, but kindly. She reaches out and touches his elbow, and Martin stops pacing for a brief second. "I mean - imagine. They come out here and in the course of their questions, they find out you've hired us because you believe ghosts are trying to kill you. Nevermind that we </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>ghosts are trying to kill someone, because the police will hear that and think we are scam artists and you are mentally deranged and then you'll never get to the bottom of this all, whereas </span>
  <em>
    <span>in this room right now </span>
  </em>
  <span>we have one of the only people in the world who can actually talk to skulls. Hamlet, please state your case."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon is still staring at the table; Melanie has to give him a kick before he looks up, startled, clearly having been paying attention to the more esoteric conversation around him. "Huh?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I want to go to the police about the body in the woods," Martin says before Georgie can say anything. He gives Jon a look Melanie classes as </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely unfair, </span>
  </em>
  <span>considering how pretty he can be. "Don't you agree?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Um," Jon looks to Georgie, and away from Martin, but Melanie's been friends with Jon for a while now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows how this goes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think you should talk to the thing, if there's a spirit around it," Georgie says. She has the advantage of making sense, and Jon never likes to get the police involved, but she has the disadvantage here of not being an incredibly handsome man making puppy-dog eyes at him. Melanie can practically see the cogs whirring in his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think I saw a spirit," he says reluctantly, one hand plucking at the side of his arm, "I </span>
  <em>
    <span>think, </span>
  </em>
  <span>mind you, I don't know. I - I - I'm not sure we should. Um. Get the police involved. Until we're... or, until we know what this is. I mean. If it's involved with the - I mean, maybe the body is even older than Elias. Maybe </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>is our missing link. Maybe the body is - is our restless spirit. And maybe I can help."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chou meows at the air, evidently involving herself in the ghostly conversation; Jon smiles down at her, scratches the back of her ear, and then turns to the living with his hands up. "That's what I think. That's my two... my two cent."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you think there's a spirit, or you know there was one that just didn't come out to talk to you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know there's one there," Jon looks briefly uncomfortable even when looking away from Martin. "I just... I don't think it'll be like the ones in the house. You have to understand, this is an exception to the-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ghosts are ghosts are ghosts," Georgie interrupts, steely-voiced. "I just want to know that if you talk to them, if you-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll talk to them plenty, Georgie, I just don't want anyone to-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm only worried about-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>don't </span>
  </em>
  <span>be, because I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon, your track record-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Shut up," Melanie snaps across the pair of them, ignoring Martin's startled look at her. "Both of you </span>
  <em>
    <span>shut </span>
  </em>
  <span>up. Jon is going to talk to this ghost, nobody is going to go to any sort of authority figure, I'm going to go and argue with our landlord, and Georgie is going to go back and keep looking for another letter from Barney, or whatever his name was."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Barnabas," both Martin and Jon say softly, and then look at each other. Martin's ears are red.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie resists the incredibly strong urge to roll her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Landlord, though," Martin says as Melanie makes to leave the room, "What - why would you need to go argue with your landlord?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's in the lease. We have to let her know if we're all going to leave the flat empty for more than three weeks at a time, because of the... oh, Christ, I don't know, the pipes or some shit. But she's... I don't know. I might have to go back to London for a bit," Melanie scowls. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>hates </span>
  </em>
  <span>talking to Jeanie, the woman they reluctantly rent from, but she's the only one of the three of them who isn't too kind (Georgie) or too scared (Jon) to actually go after what they need.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, well that's-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just go speak to the fucking ghost," Melanie says, and closes the door behind her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon approaches alone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin had wanted to come with him, had been practically beside himself with insistence to come with him, but Jon knows ghosts. Jon’s whole life is knowing how to know ghosts, and he isn’t about to forget that because some objectively handsome man </span>
  <em>
    <span>that he definitely doesn’t find attractive for any other reason </span>
  </em>
  <span>bats his eyelashes at him. He follows the broken trail of bracken, ferns, and snapped twigs from that morning, and tries only to think about Chou in his pocket and about nothing else; not the flat in London, not the women still hunting for something else written by Barnabas, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>not the way Martin had looked in the kitchen, pink-cheeked, head haloed in sun-blonded hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he approaches alone, which is what, eventually, everything always boils down to. The skull lies beside a few arm bones, a curved rib or two, and a long, thin femur; there are brownish lumps in the grass he assumes must be other miscellaneous body parts, and he guesses he won’t have to be hunting for long to put an entire skeleton together if he so chose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t choose. He kneels, instead, and picks up the skull and presses it to his forehead, bone to skin. “I can see you,” he whispers into the hollow where a mouth should be, but which is now only grinning teeth. “If you want to talk to me, I can listen to you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon talks and Jon approaches and Jon coaxes and wheedles alone, until they decide to talk to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And not all ghosts are a pair of friendly faces starved for human conversation. Most ghosts are-)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spirit is long and half-melted, black hair pouring down his face looking less like hair and more like a waterfall of something like oil, wet and unpleasantly glistening. His eyes are wide and pupiless, but there are eyes all over his body in recompense for this, of all colours and sizes, on his elbows, on his exposed knees, in the hollows of his throat, on every knuckle and fingerbone, on his ankles peeping out from underneath the too-short turnups on his trousers. His lips are grey and colourless and moist. He reaches out and his fingers are wrinkled as though he’s been soaking in water for several hours. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon tries and succeeds not to recoil, and pruned fingertips touch his chin - his lips - the bow between his nose and his mouth - and he can taste dry earth, soil, growing things. He is still holding the skull. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you need more time,” he says softly, “I can leave you… I can come down. Every day. As long as you need to feel… to feel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spirit is drawing something from him, Jon can feel, something the other ghosts in the house hardly needed to feel almost solid. His head is spinning and he knows he won’t be able to stand for a good few minutes after that, but he hardly minds; this is his job, this is what he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He talks to ghosts and he gives them whatever they need to feel human again, if only for a minute, and this spirit badly needs it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is almost beyond redemption, but Jon deals in almosts every day, and almost is never entirely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fingers tighten in his hair and pull and Jon can’t help but shift forward against the steps of the folly, his fall cushioned by his arms just in time. His eyes are stinging. The points where the spirit touches him - and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>touch him, physically, and Jon wonders what this would look like to someone like Martin - they burn, very hot and very painful, like picking up a spark fallen from the fire to the carpet before it can set flame to anything more. They burn and they don’t let up and Jon wants to cry out but he doesn’t; he bites down on his forearm instead, and tastes blood from the many little glass-cuts that still haven’t healed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spirits like Tim and Sasha, like Daisy and Elias, like even old Myriam Barratt, are not the most problematic nor the most common things Jon meets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(They are so adjacent to their living selves that it’s almost an insult to call them spirits. The things that tether them to the living world, their </span>
  <em>
    <span>tethers, </span>
  </em>
  <span>are so strong they keep them knotted to dry land - Chou, for Myriam Barratt, and something unexplainable about Blackwood House for those ghosts.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most spirits Jon meets are almost, but not quite, completely untethered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And those that lose themselves are poltergeists, wholly beyond saving.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But spirits like this are the most common. They had a strong tether once, back in the months after they died, and now their connection to it is frail and fragile as a wisp, but not gone enough for them to be irredeemable. They have to pull strength from Jon just go get the humanity enough to tell him where their tether is, so he can resolve it in a way that releases them from the world completely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hands on his shoulders now. He feels eyelashes against his skin; the eyes on the knuckles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You need to stop soon,” he wheezes, his lungs aching with every breath he takes, “Or I won’t have… anything left… to give you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks the spirit can hear him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>hopes </span>
  </em>
  <span>the spirit can hear him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usually doing this he has Georgie with him, calm, cool Georgie, who can pull him away while Melanie chases with a camera and the YouTube views skyrocket, but he didn’t bring her this time. Too many things to do, Barnabas to find, their landlord to argue with, and Jon had wanted Martin to think he was capable, although </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>he wanted this remains a mystery to him. He wanted Martin to know he could hold his own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spirit keeps sucking and he’s looking almost, but not quite, normal now, taking all of Jon that he has to spare. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon remembers in a shock the skull he’s hugging like a baby, and he drops it and it bounces and rolls across the folly, comical in how light it falls. The burning stops. He can’t see the spirit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon sees light flashes, like being blinded by something incredibly bright, and his head is spinning, and then he closes his eyes and his head </span>
  <em>
    <span>stops </span>
  </em>
  <span>spinning - stops doing anything he can feel at all. He slumps boneless against the steps, looking for all the world like just another body dumped there amongst the scattered skeleton where nobody can see. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon has been gone all day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon has been gone all day, and Martin is feeling increasingly like a spare part. He delivered a cup of coffee to Melanie, who was on the phone to someone, pinching her nose with a pained expression; she had thanked him, mouthed the words, but hadn't hung up. He can still hear her voice through the house, through the eye-chalked door of her and Georgie's bedroom saying things about rent and business owners and somebody being a cutthroat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie has been in the office beside the library on the second floor, hunting for another letter from Barnabas, the one that Daisy (isn't that her name?) had told Jon existed. Martin joined her for a while but she's in a foul mood, and the cloying silence in the room had chased him right back out again after half an hour. Paper everywhere. No letters - when he left her, she was pouring through the pages of old books, with the logic that if the first letter they found was inside a book, then surely others of that age might be hidden similarly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Martin left her to it, and now he's sitting in the kitchen worrying at the skin around his thumbnail and thinking about Jon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a skeleton in the woods. A whole skeleton. And Jon had said a spirit, a strong spirit, and Martin has seen enough horror films to know you don't tend to have a good time when you go out to confront things that live in skeletons in the woods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Jon's been gone </span>
  <em>
    <span>all day.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"If there are any ghosts in here, you can tell him I was very brave," Martin murmurs to the dead air, and he's not sure but he thinks he feels a coldness pass through his shoulder, like a brushed touch from a...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fanciful idea. "Tell him it was like a scene from </span>
  <em>
    <span>Indiana Jones," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin adds, and then lets himself out the back door of the kitchen just as he and Jon had done when they first found the damn thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's going to see if Jon's okay, regardless of what Jon told them. All day, a mysterious skull, and a chandelier dropping on top of him - Martin suspects he isn't the only person the thing in Blackwood House would like to see dead, even if none of the others have realised that yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The day is a little less hot now, and clouds have drifted aimlessly over the sun, casting intermittent shadow over Blackwood House. Martin stomps towards the woods, some of Georgie's bad mood eating into him as he goes, and for a long minute he's upset at the whole lot of them. At his mother for never telling him about everything that the Blackwoods apparently </span>
  <em>
    <span>had, </span>
  </em>
  <span>about everything he didn't know until it was too late for her to tell him. At all of the unseen ghosts Jon has befriended that Martin can't see, the things that make him look over his shoulder even when he's doing something innocuous, nevermind when he's just - spending time with himself. He's angry. He wants his life to be his own again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ferns tickle against his legs and his exposed ankles on top of his trainers, but Martin follows the path broken by himself and Jon, and presumably by Jon alone earlier. The trees are cool and shady, and stop most of the wind from getting to him; this would be a good spot for a picnic, maybe, or a cuppa by one of these half-fallen trees. Someplace a little different to the jetty by the lake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A thought for another time, perhaps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes ten minutes to get to the folly now Martin knows where he's going, and it can't be more than a quarter of a mile away from the main house through the forest. "Jon?" He calls, his voice a lot stronger than he thought it might be. "Jon, are you there?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shivers as a brief coldness whistles through his bones, sneaking through the trees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A normal wind? Or -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something else?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon? Jon? It's Martin," Martin tries, and then winces at himself. Of course it's Martin. Who else is it meant to be? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stupid, Martin.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But if it's the ghost -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If a ghost has got Jon -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin steps out of their forged path and into the clearing where the folly is. It's a pretty enough little building, even if it has been almost entirely claimed by moss and roots and grass and the woods, growing up the long pillars that hold the roof above it. There's a stone bench in it with weathered faces for feet, and he can imagine it being a perfectly pleasant place to sit back before all this, to sit and gossip away from the main house, and underneath the bench is the skull, white in patches where the sun has bleached, darker in places where the iron staining from the blood and the muscles that once covered it hasn't quite vanished. Eye sockets look at nothing at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is very, very cold, colder than it was when they both found the skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lying by the folly in the grass, eyes shut, head slumped against the steps, one arm bleeding from opened cuts, is Jon. He looks like he's asleep, and just as peaceful as he might look if he was sleeping.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But of course he isn’t; Martin is coming to realise that Jon does nothing in halves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Aw, fuck it," says Martin to nobody in particular, and kneels down and picks him up, one arm under his shoulders and one under his knees. Jon weighs almost nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so he makes his way back to the house, cursing ghosts and pretty men all the way back. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p><p>leave a comment/kudos if u enjoyed ! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Curiouser</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>here we go!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: A lurid introductory title page in creative font, mock-blood dripping from the letters. It reads: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Britain’s WEIRDEST Unsolved Crimes! </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Cut to a picture of an unfamiliar man, well-built, in shirtsleeves and braces. His hair is curly and blonde, and his eyes are blue. “Meet James Wright,” says a perky voiceover. “He may look like a friendly young man in the prime of his life, but this is the </span>
  <em>
    <span>last known picture of him alive!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Cut to a picture of a still lake, with a grey filter over it. “James Wright went missing in 1973, last seen near this lake in Devon - under </span>
  <em>
    <span>mysterious circumstances. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He was with nobody when he vanished, had no enemies, and weirdest of all; the lake has been trawled seven times in search of a body, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing has ever been found!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Another picture of James Wright, this time looking younger, a university graduation photo. “What happened to James Wright? Was it aliens? Was it ghosts? Was it abduction? The case remains one of Britain’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Weirdest Unsolved Crimes!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias stays in the basement. He doesn't talk to anyone, usually, so nobody notices this as anything out of the ordinary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Small things go missing - Melanie's hairbrush, Georgie's yellow shoelaces, Jon's spare box of hairpins. Melanie notices, Georgie doesn't, Jon barely does. Nobody puts it up to anything other than being in a very big, very messy house, and not keeping a tight enough eye on their possessions.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon wakes up a whole twenty-six hours after his interaction with the spirit in the folly, to find every part of his body freezing apart from a spot on his chest where Chou is sitting purring happily, and his right hand, which Martin is holding between both of his. Jon's eyes feel very heavy, stuck together with a day's worth of sleep, and he finds he's perfectly content to lie there and pretend to still be asleep, listening to Martin talk. He's speaking in a constant, low murmur of information, stuff like </span>
  <em>
    <span>and I didn't even know what a solicitor did, really, but I didn't want to ask them and I'm pretty sure I could have sold the house if I had wanted to but I didn't want to say and then it was too late, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Basira's in the Met, you know. She doesn't tell me much about her job. She used to all the time, but now we just... don't chat that often. You know how it is. I guess you don't, actually. You work with your best friends. I just ring mine and complain about the ghosts trying to kill me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon hadn't known about Basira, before, and now he feels a bit guilty for not asking. He should have asked about Martin, back when they were all new to the house and it was still okay to ask things like that, but now they've been here long enough that it would just be awkward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hand is really rather warm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You looked pretty dead," Martin tells the Jon he thinks is still safely sleeping. His thumb rubs across Jon's knuckles reflexively, and it feels very intimate; Jon thinks if he wasn't happily pretending to be asleep, he'd be blushing. His ears would be going red at the very least. "I thought you </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>died, and you know, I just couldn't cope with it. My first thought was that I might get arrested for having a death on my property, and then my second was that Melanie would kill me, and then my third was that you were still breathing and I was all good. Does that make me bad? I didn't really want you to die - no, that sounds awful, I didn't want you to die at all. This is the most fun I've had in ages, even if it is pretty dangerous. And Melanie would </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>have killed me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin, Jon thinks fuzzily, has a very nice voice. He has a nice accent. It's not deep, but it's... friendly. He thinks Martin's voice would suit a dormouse, perhaps, one of those Beatrix Potter things that go on teacups and decorative plates.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wonders if Martin would be insulted by that comparison. Probably. Don't tell him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think you're very brave for doing that," Martin says, and is about to say something else, he's breathing in to say something, but Jon's starting to feel duplicitous about pretending to sleep and hearing so much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Good morning, Martin," he says and his voice comes out very croaky and unused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is wearing a dark grey jumper and a blush when Jon looks at him. "How - </span>
  <em>
    <span>long </span>
  </em>
  <span>have you been awake?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just a moment," Jon says. "Ow. My head hurts."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It should. Georgie says you aren't meant to do things like that on your own. Georgie said you could really easily have died!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Georgie exaggerates," Jon lifts his free hand to pet Chou, and if Martin won't bring attention to their joined hands then he won't either. "I - </span>
  <em>
    <span>ow. </span>
  </em>
  <span>What happened?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I went looking for you and found you lying in the woods, and I - um. You got back to the house, anyway, and Georgie yelled at Melanie and me and the ghosts and then we put you to bed and then we searched the office some more. No basement key, not yet, but we did find another letter from that Barnabas guy to - um, I guess the same person? Um. We thought we'd hold off on reading it in case the ghosts said anything important to you." Martin squeezes Jon's hand. "We thought you were a lot... well, Georgie was worried."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"She always is," Jon says, and tries for a smile. He almost gets there, or at least he thinks he does; Martin smiles back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was worried about you, anyway," he says plainly. Jon has always admired people who just </span>
  <em>
    <span>say </span>
  </em>
  <span>what they think, what they feel, instead of wallowing. Jon is a wallower. "I thought you might... well, Georgie was yelling, and I think she made it sound very dire. I mean, it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>dire-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I wasn't going to die," Jon says softly. He wants to squeeze Martin's hand back, but he hasn't got the courage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but you were obviously in some sort of... of trouble."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks at Martin and thinks he's never seen a man so earnest. "Trouble tends to follow me, I'm afraid, but I don't usually have someone trustworthy running behind to beat it off."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn't know what Martin's face is saying, but he thinks it might be good.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I found this in the office, in the top drawer," Georgie says. She's put the thin paper into several polly-pocket plastic slips, to stop it from tearing under anyone's grip, and now it lies spread out on the wood of the kitchen table, almost offensively innocuous for all that they're eyeing it like it might explode at any second. Jon, Martin, Melanie, Georgie, and behind Georgie peering at the letter with eyes the size of dinner plates are Tim and Sasha and Daisy fanned out like some ghoulish cartoon character. "To my love, again. Barnabas is a very soppy man."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Was a very soppy man, I think you mean," Tim says. Jon shoots him a thin smile, just in recognition, and Tim grins broadly back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, that's one thing out of the road," Martin says, with a brittle sort of cheeriness he hasn't dropped since two days before. When he and Jon find themselves alone he's all sun, all soft rounded corners and private smiles, but as soon as anyone brings up the bigger situation he just shrinks. Corners. Points. "We read the letter and, what, exactly?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shrugs and looks to Daisy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't know, really," she says, eyes quite wide at being pointed at even if only three other people in the room can actually see her. "I don't - I only said I recognised the writing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"If you find out what the spirit who's attacking you </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn't </span>
  </em>
  <span>want you to find out, you might discover how to get rid of it," Sasha says reasonably, passing a hand through Daisy's shoulder in the ghostly equivalent of a comforting pat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon repeats this to the others. This explanation seems to satisfy Martin, who sits back and nods, although his foot keeps bouncing off the tiles and wobbling the chair he's sitting on. Both Melanie and Georgie don't seem to be thinking anything with their faces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Will I read?" He asks, already tugging the first plastic page towards him, the curling (very elegant but very difficult) script deciphering itself before his eyes. "Out loud?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do it for the peanut gallery," Tim says, and Jon can't help but laugh at him before he begins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dated December 1812,” he reads, fingertip tracing the words through the thin plastic, “So what… two years before the other one? A year and a half? Our Barnabas must have known this person a long time before anything bad happened to him. The accident, Daisy said.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nods in confirmation, but looks as curious as the rest of them. “Read it aloud?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will,” Jon smiles at her, and reads:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>December 1812</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My dearest,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I hope this finds you well, dear friend, and I curse the habits of London society that have kept you so far away from me for so long. The cruel mistress of polite behaviour and conduct prevents me from tossing all to the side and visiting, as I am staying now with my aunt in the city until the end of the season and possibly beyond - certainly over Christmas. At that time I hope we will be able to meet again with the job lot of our friends up at the house, for in truth I have found this venture to London far more dull than in previous years. You may congratulate yourself at least on having ruined me for acceptable company, as I know you will when we next meet. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I confess to you that I miss you terribly. On the rare occasions I see M. in town - where he stands off to the side and refuses to dance, despite being young enough and unmarried, I remind you - he mocks me. If I had a drink for every time I have been called by feminine address, or teased for my affection, then I should be always merry. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I will also confess: I do not mind overmuch what M. says to me. I am sure he would be horrified to discover I think of him more as a friend than anything else, but that is what he is, indeed. The closest I have to a friend present in the city, although of course he has no real business here apart from a need to participate in society. I lived long believing that although I of course come to the city for fine food and friendship, M. must be here for his seat in the House, but I discovered he has none such thing. Perhaps he simply enjoys the company of people he would not otherwise see. I admit it must be very lonely for him during the off months, off in the moors with nothing but a few Shires servants for company. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Regardless, and though this will shock you I am sure, I do have a goal in writing to you. Last week I had the good fortune of being invited to dinner at the Scott house not terribly far from my aunt’s, and I accepted gladly. M. was invited apparently, but did not attend. I know you loathe society gossip so I will not linger on it, but suffice to say at this dinner there was much veiled reference to our J., and of course to you. Much conversation about your loss in London this season. I will tell you about it after Christmas, if you want to know, and if you want to know beforehand you must stop mocking my need to dictate every rumour - see, I can be useful!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At Scott’s, amongst this gossip, I turned to the man I had been seated by and asked of his relation to the family and of his name. He was handsome in a way, but of course you may rest assured nothing holds a candle to your features. He replied that his name was Smirke, and he had mentored Scott a brief while some years ago. Robert Smirke, asked I, for I am not completely at a loss in the sea of occurrences and I know you interest yourself in the contemporary architecture of London. Yes, he responded, Robert Smirke, and he looked quite pleased to have been recognised by name. Although this will ruffle your feathers, you will know I am well accustomed to praising the men I happen upon in society, for more than one of my friends has been blessed with a sense of his own importance!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We talked further. He is working on something in the city, some offices in the Mall, and then he mentioned a project in Devon that was occupying more and more of his attention. Naturally I mentioned you, and that I spent a lot of my time in Devon these days. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, he said, but it is for him that I am designing. What a fortuitous coincidence!  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I inquired about you from him, because apparently he had seen you very recently, and I have not been in Devon for almost two months now. He told me you were fine, but preoccupied with what you had hired him to design for him. I asked what it might be, but he wouldn’t say. Apparently you have sworn him to the deepest secrecy, which I find very characteristic of you. He said you were involved with something he had not yet seen before, so you may rest easy knowing I talked you up to him; I said if anyone could do that, it would be you. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So you may talk me up to our friend Mr Smirke. I will be seeing him at M’s house next week, for a small get-together of those of our company in London - apparently Smirke is highly regarded by all, and I can’t imagine how I have escaped knowledge of him thus far. He seems nice enough. I hope I will get to know him more this season, before you steal him away from company once more. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I hope you are doing well, up there on your own. Know that I think of you often and always in complimentary terms, whether you deserve it or not! You are always in my heart. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yours with the utmost love, </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Your Barnabas </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon clears his throat, it sore for a brief moment from the length of the speech. “His Barnabas certainly speaks highly of him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel bad for him,” Martin says, chin cupped in his hands, looking dreamily off into the middle distance. “He’s in love with this… person. I thought he was writing the letters to - what did Daisy call him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mordechai,” Jon and Daisy say at the same time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, to him, but he obviously isn’t. There’s a third player in all this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quite more than three,” Sasha says. She looks contemplative, and when both Jon and Tim look questioningly at her she just shakes her head and floats backwards a little until she’s half-melted into the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But this doesn’t help us, really,” Jon says. “I mean… what do we know? That some guy called Smirke was friends with both Barnabas and the man Barnabas wrote to? That the letter receiver is obviously a bit of a dickhead? That Barnabas is sweet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure there’s more in the house,” Daisy says, just as Georgie says: “I know I can find some more.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m sure,” Jon agrees. He can’t look away from the wistful expression on Martin’s face. “All we have to do is keep digging.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There isn’t much more to say after that. Melanie once more vanishes, this time to ring up their electricity company and ask about their policy for bills during non-occupation, but Jon has a suspicion that at least one of them will be heading back down to London for a bit to sort things out in person. And then there’s the podcast to record, and another episode for the channel to upload…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I need to ring Basira,” Martin says. “Do you mind if I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They drift off to various corners of the house, Georgie back to searching for the basement key and more Barnabas correspondence, Martin to call his friend, Melanie to their bedroom. Jon is left once more in the presence of only the ghosts, who all seem to be considering things of their own mind, and don’t pay him much heed when he puts his head in his hands and drifts off to sleep with Chou against his cheek.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Basira sounds tired, and in the background Martin can hear the murmuring of something on her end - the radio, perhaps, or the TV turned on very low. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Are you sure?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"He was almost dead, Basira. He slept a whole day plus change. I mean, I was worried, and then the other two were worried. I just feel... out of my depth." Martin is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, a position he finds himself in more often than not these days. "And Melanie keeps having to fend off their landlord. Something about occupying the house? So I think they might either all be heading back to London, or leaving one of them here or something. I just... god, I'm sorry. I'm talking and talking. What are you up to?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I can't really talk about it," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says slowly and regretfully, </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Super secret. I've been moved to a new... division, I guess. It's a lot more intense than my last posting."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hot Fuzz </span>
  </em>
  <span>style?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That makes her laugh. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"I guess you could say that, sure. Hot Fuzz style but in reverse. Man, I didn't know the regular Met was a walk in the park until I took this, but... I guess it's a learning curve. I'm pretty wrecked, though."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I guess you would be," Martin clucks sympathetically. He's good at being sympathetic, and Basira really does sound tired. "Anything exciting, at least?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Exciting, sure. And... I don't know. I </span>
  </em>
  <span>really </span>
  <em>
    <span>can't tell you anything, but it's all a bit... relevant," </span>
  </em>
  <span>she says, all reluctance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh. Mysterious."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I know. It's very... Beeb on a Sunday night."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin feels a pang of homesickness. He and Basira used to watch those dreadful three-parters, the BBC drama shows they'd play at around eight on a Sunday, full of police drama and killings and things happening in the Cotswolds, and dramatic greyscale shots of the coast down by Cornwall. They would put bets on who did it, and Martin always guessed right and Basira would go crazy because </span>
  <em>
    <span>I'm the police here, Martin! I'm the hapless police officer!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He's smiling. "I miss you."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I miss you too. You might be seeing me soon, though."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, a break? The force, give you a break?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs again. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Don't be silly. I think... the job I'm doing now, the case they have me assigned to, I might be headed down your neck of the woods. Don't get your hopes up or anything. I just might be."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll take a maybe over a hard no," Martin says, and already he's happier than he was before he rang her. "You come down here. You'd sort these spirits right out."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sounds like she's smiling, but a forced sort of smile, when next she speaks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Hah. Yeah, that would be funny.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a long silence where neither of them quite know what to say next. Martin has always wanted to bridge the gap between he and Basira that’s grown in the last few years, as she got further sucked into her job at the Met and he got further sucked into misery at the way his life had ground to a halt, working in the CEX on Camden High Street and pretending to enjoy discussing video games, but he never found out the way to do it. Maybe it’s ghosts. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Does the name Bouchard ring a bell?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says suddenly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Or… Wright, or Mendelson, or Lloyd, or Elliott, or… or Magnus?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bouchard, Bouchard…” Martin worries at his bottom lip, the word faintly familiar to him although he doesn’t know why. “I - I mean, it rings a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bell, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but I don’t know… no. No, I guess. Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Just a thought. Something I’m working on.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“This new division you work for - what </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, exactly? Drugs? Organised crime?” Martin finds it very hard to picture small, slight Basira on any of the tougher London specialisations within the Met, but he also finds it very hard to believe she would lie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a pause again, long and heavy. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Something like that,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>she says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah, something like that.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I need to go back down to the folly," Jon says, arms folded stubbornly in front of him, as though </span>
  <em>
    <span>he's </span>
  </em>
  <span>the one being sensible and Martin is the one being an idiot for no reason. "There's something there that will help us far quicker than letters from a dead man saying there was architectural work done to the house two hundred years ago, and you know it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You need to not die on my property," Martin retorts. "I mean, it's bad enough when there's a fucking ghost trying to kill us, never mind you actively seeking out things that - that - that, what, suck out your life through your skin?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nothing so dramatic," Jon says. Chou is sitting again on his shoulder, batting at a loose strand of hair by his ear that has escaped the plait he's put it in; it looks very cute, Martin will admit, even if Jon is trying to argue his way back out to another murder-ghost. "Martin, if you just-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"If I come with you, will you still go?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon opens and closes his mouth, looking surprised, but Martin doesn't know why he would be. "You - it'll be boring. The thing needs a new source of energy before it'll be in any shape to speak to anybody, and so it's just going to be me sitting down for ages and then falling asleep. You could be looking for a letter. Or... reading. Or... doing anything else."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I could be out of the house so nothing tries to kill me again," Martin points out. "It might not be anything to do with you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shrugs. "If you want to come, I won't stop you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Martin does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The house has collected an uneasy air of calm ever since the library incident; long enough for both Melanie and Jon's cuts to scab over and heal, and long enough for Martin to start checking over his shoulder again for the next volley of attacks. The ghost, the thing, the whatever-it-is chasing him, doesn't care much about time or place or method of attack, and Martin's still coming across his fair share of dangerously hanging ornaments, decorative weaponry, and tripping hazards at the tops of stairs or over balconies, but it isn't bad enough yet for him to pin it down to any supernatural activity. All the same, it's only a matter of time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The day isn't as bright as it has been, nor as warm, the wind chilling through the holes in Martin's knitwear as soon as he steps out the side door to the kitchen. Jon looks snug enough in his jacket, Chou happily secreted in his top pocket, but he's shivering just a little every time a particularly strong burst blows across the lake towards them. "Cold," Martin remarks, and feels instantly like a fool for doing so. People </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate </span>
  </em>
  <span>people who make small talk about the weather.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon gives him a wry look. "You could say that."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The walk to the folly is quicker now and easier, since Martin and Jon have tramped down the grass and the thickets and the ferns. Inside the trees is warmer, the worst of the wind blocked by the thick trunks and splaying branches. Martin wants to say something, but everything sounds childish, or stupid, when he plays it out in his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The skull is still on the folly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think it's a man," Jon says. His eyes are unfocused now, and evidently he can see something Martin can't - his hands flex by his sides, like a nervous tic. "I think... he can't be very old. Late twenties, maybe. Early thirties. He mustn't have died that long ago, either."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you need to-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon doesn't look around, but when he shuffles forward to the folly, he reaches out to sling Martin by the wrist with his other hand. "If I... touch you," he says, and he sounds strangely embarrassed, "I think it'll take me longer to... be tired. To have to stop. And I need to touch him."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin slides his hand into Jon's, linking their fingers, and thinks once more about how glad he is that Jon didn't notice their clasped fingers when he woke up after his first round with the new ghost. "This okay?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Um. Yes," Jon still doesn't look at him, so Martin simply has to trust that it is. "Um. Can we sit down?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They do. Martin perches on the edge of the folly, and Jon on the body of the thing with his hand out to the skull, his fingertips brushing the forehead there, very gently. Martin thinks about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hamlet, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and wishes he hadn't; Jon would make an actor, maybe, with that odd sincerity he injects into everything he reads aloud written by someone other than him, like just for a second he's settling into somebody else's skin. It's admirable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What does he look like," Martin whispers in a hush, when he sees Jon's eyes unfocused, his hand shaking even where it's still on the brown bone. "You can tell me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tall and pale," Jon says, in a voice that isn't quite his own, "Long hair, very dark, very dark. Is it dyed? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Is it dyed, he says, of course it isn't dyed, </span>
  </em>
  <span>it isn't dyed, it's just black as pitch, tall and pale... </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell him about my eyes, go on, you know you want to, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he's covered in eyes. Tattoos of eyes. On his knees and on his hands and on his face and on his ribs and on his-" Jon's ears burn red for a moment, and his eyes blink rapidly, </span>
  <em>
    <span>"You can tell him about the other places," </span>
  </em>
  <span>he says in that other voice, and then in his own, "No, I don't think I want to. Have you got a name? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not yet."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It is bizarre and overwhelming and beautiful, in a way, to hear his voice be tossed between Jon and this other thing like a ball during a tennis match, Jon's eyes flickering aware and then gone again as the spirit speaks through him. Martin can't help but smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a long, long few minutes Jon falls silent, and his eyes slip closed. His head thumps against Martin’s shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin keeps him like that, sleeping against him, and thinks that maybe some things can be peaceful. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They have to drive Georgie to the hospital, in the end, all of them piled into Martin’s Ford Fiesta. Melanie drives; Martin is shaking, and he only stopped crying a few minutes before they decided to leave, horrible fat tears made of nothing but shock. Jon and Martin are in the back, Martin behind the drivers seat because Melanie has to pull the thing far forward to reach the pedals, and Jon behind Georgie in the passenger's seat because Georgie has to stretch out her hand and wrist. Her skin still smells of vomit, although she and Melanie did her best to wash it off her broken limb in the kitchen sink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Martin says again, as Melanie drives over a pothole in the lane and Georgie swears. Her face is wet. "I'm so sorry-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fucking shut up," Georgie snaps. Jon can see how painful it must be. The bookshelf was pushed right on top of her, and when Melanie found her she wasn't even conscious; there is blood in her hair, right at the top of her scalp, visible with how short she likes to crop the hair to the skull. She's pink today, pink-roses t-shirt, pale pink dungarees, pink boots with red laces. A red enamel pin on one of the straps. A floral belt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"Ow-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm going as gentle as I can," Melanie says through gritted teeth. She has blood under her thumbnail still from where she pet across Georgie's skull, looking for the worst of the damage. "Jon, make yourself useful, Google Maps us the way to the hospital-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Turn right at the end of the lane," Martin says, his voice all snotty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"How do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>know?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I had to go a few weeks ago," Martin makes an audible effort to pull himself together, all thick with apology. "I had to - I thought I'd sprained my - I. It didn't. But I went."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wordlessly, Melanie flicks the indicator up, and the car is filled only with the sound of the light flicking on and off, and of Georgie hissing in pain as she grips her arm with the looped fingers of her other hand. Jon can't look away, but he can't look </span>
  <em>
    <span>at </span>
  </em>
  <span>her either; it looks immensely painful, and when they'd all come running in at the crash Georgie had been lying at a funny angle, her body half-buried under the books that had shed themselves from the falling shelves.  It had only been Daisy in the room, and she hadn't seen what happened - she had explained, through a face so angry even Jon had been wary, that she had turned to look out the window and heard the crash over her shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The car journey does not get any less tense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every time Melanie dips into a pothole, or brakes particularly harshly behind a tractor, a lorry, any sort of car moving under sixty, Georgie curses all wet and upset. Jon wishes he could - do </span>
  <em>
    <span>something. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Georgie has, for as long as he's known her, been the sort of person who would rather die than let slip any real pain she's in. He's only seen her cry once and that was at the unexpected death of her grandfather halfway through their exam season in second year; not even when Melanie had been arrested in the Military Hospital, not even when Jon had that fall from the window pushed by a poltergeist, not even when -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Point is, Georgie doesn't cry. She's making a real effort not to, but they keep sneaking out, made of nothing but the pain of a badly broken arm and the shock of having it happen unexpectedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Jon looks at Martin, he looks anguished.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie just looks mad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes twenty-five minutes to get to the hospital from Blackwood House, and after fifteen of those minutes have passed Jon gets tired of the look on Martin's face that refuses to vanish; he reaches his hand out into the middle seat that separates them, palm up, and waits until Martin sees it. He doesn't say anything, and neither does Martin when he notices, but Martin does slide his hand over Jon's eventually, his fingers resting loose in the gaps between Jon's splayed fingers and thumb. Martin's hand is warm, where Jon's is very cold, and Jon finds that he doesn't want to let go when Melanie slides into a parking space near the entrance to A&amp;E. He doesn't want to be cold again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And Martin looks like he needs the comfort, which is obviously the only reason Jon did it in the first place.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Obviously.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm going with her," Melanie tells Jon and Martin when they're sitting on the uncomfortable blue plastic seats in the waiting room. Georgie has her eyes closed now, her arm still held out in front of her, her whole face covered in a sheen of sweat, her bottom lip trapped hard between her teeth, a little bead of blood hanging on the valley her teeth make there. "You two - just - wait. Wait. No fucking ghosts."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No ghosts," Jon promises, and doesn't tell her how many he can feel about him, just out of view. People don't tend to die in the waiting room of A&amp;E, but that safety doesn't extend to the rest of the hospital, not by any means, and he can feel a mountain of pain and suffering and screaming and people who died with so many threads unfinished that their life was more like a scarf torn from its stitches than anything with more meaning. "No ghosts," he repeats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks at him sideways, and after Melanie has gone up to the front desk to give Georgie's name and a brief summary of the injury, Jon feels a warm sort of something on his knee. He looks down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin's hand, palm-up, on his jeans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles, awkwardly, and Jon smiles back, and takes his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie lets one last tear fall from underneath her trapped eyelid, and they sit in frosty silence with Melanie until </span>
  <em>
    <span>Georgie Barker </span>
  </em>
  <span>is called by a sympathetic-looking man at the door to a room called </span>
  <em>
    <span>Treatment Room A.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Stay here," Melanie says to Jon, as though he has anywhere else to go, and then she vanishes, holding Georgie comfortingly around the waist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shudders now she isn't there to see him. "How long do you think it'll take?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I honestly don't know," Martin says, giving his hand a small squeeze, "I first went to a hospital when I was... oh, Christ, I think I was twenty-one?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"What?" </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon looks at him incredulously. "I mean, I was a pretty well-behaved child and I still ended up in the hospital a few times. How did you-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"My mum didn't really like hospitals, I guess. I think she - she didn't really. Um, she had a bad time when she was younger and I think she thought I would as well," Martin is slowly turning pink around the ears and across his cheeks, and Jon thinks a little too late that maybe this is one of those questions he shouldn't be asking without build-up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm sorry-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, no don't be," Martin smiles. It's a little embarrassed, but he keeps going. "I was in - you know, I never went to uni, I guess, but a few of my friends from my job did back then, and they were going to this club night with the RVC students out near Potters Bar, and they invited me along, and my friend had this terrible little Fiat and... god, it was so busted. It was such a fixer-upper but she loved it. You know student cars, you know that sort of. That sort of thing. And she was driving, and it's... you know, a little way out of London, and the guy didn't have his lights on. The other guy didn't. Other car, no headlights, we were all... I mean, my friend hadn't been drinking, but we all had. I had to get, like, thirty stitches. But I... well, my mum was in and out of hospital when she got a little bit older. And I guess. I guess you can't really afford to be, um. Um. Mistrustful. I suppose."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks at the hand holding his. Jon's hand is speckled in round scars, recent, and older ones from a long career of placing himself in difficult situations. Martin's hand is bigger and paler, and there are scars around the knuckles. Dishwasher scars. People put knives in sinks. "I'm sorry," he says at last. "That sounds... not fun."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was okay. I mean. It could have been worse."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It could have been better," Jon says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin smiles again. Every time he smiles, he just looks sadder. "I suppose it could have been, yeah."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had been the bookshelf in the office. Georgie had been searching for more letters from Barnabas; Melanie had been on the phone to their landlord for the second hour running, and Jon, Martin, and Chou had been out near the folly, letting a ghost-spirit suck all the energy out of him. Georgie had been firmly on the ground, paging through books, her feet on the ground; Daisy had been watching her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was definitely the spirit," Daisy had said angrily, when they ran up. "It was definitely the thing. I - Georgie wasn't climbing. She was on the floor."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie said she had looked up, and seen the first few books start to fall, and she had screamed but the thing was already toppling down on top of her. A decorative carving in the top hit her in the head, and that gave her the mild concussion, but the rest of the books and the shelf had broken her arm for her, left her trapped under the pile until Jon had heard all of the ghosts screaming in the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Arm broken. Concussion. As it goes, so far, it's the closest whatever it in the house has come to killing any of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Jon doesn't say that out loud.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's terrible," Elias says, looking appropriately horrified. He's sitting on Jon's bed. "I - I think the house might not be safe for any of you. Perhaps you should..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not leaving," Jon tells him. "But - I appreciate your -  I appreciate your concern."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias smiles wanly. "I'm just worried."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thank you. But... yeah. Thank you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon takes Chou and does what he's doing increasingly these days; he goes in search of Martin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tim finds Sasha in the library, dust motes spinning through the thin form of her ghostly body, and he thinks again how beautiful she is; how beautiful she must have been in the world, small and dark and full of life, covered in block-colours, her hair, her eyes, the colour of the paint on her lips. She’s reading an old newspaper Jon opened for her from the 70s, her mouth a little open, her index finger between her teeth. “Sasha?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks up. “News?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sort of. They’re leaving,” he shrugs, unhappy and finding it hard to hide. “I - not Jon. But Georgie and Melanie are. They - Georgie is hurt pretty badly. Did you… </span>
  <em>
    <span>see…”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I didn’t,” she says, and she sounds terribly hurt even to have been asked and Tim instantly regrets saying it. “I didn’t - I was up here. Reading about James Wright. Some disappearance in the woods near here, in 1973 - I. No, that’s not important. I didn’t see anything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She holds out her hand, and he tries his best to take it, and their skin melts through and their fingertips mingle but it’s better than nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s better than nothing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If you call us, we’ll come running,” Melanie whispers into Jon’s ear, hugging him tightly, her cheek pressed against his, enveloping him in the smell of her perfume. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie is next, giving him a back-breaking one armed hug, her other arm and hand wrapped in a graffitied plaster cast and slung around her neck. “I promise. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll replace you with Martin, for the time being,” he says in a joke that ends up falling flat and sounding horribly, embarrassingly sincere. “Georgie, really, I’m so-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you apologise I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>kill you,” she says. Tugs on the end of his ponytail the way she used to do when they were a lot younger, and she would pull on it to get his attention. “You just - stay here, and focus on not dying, and focus on making sure Martin doesn’t die either. I - if it seems bad, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please </span>
  </em>
  <span>promise me you’ll get out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promise,” Jon says, and he knows by the look on her face she has clocked it’s a lie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Martin says hollowly to both of them, and they repeat their admonishments and their requests for both of them to be careful, and their love and their hugs and their - all the rest, but all the same it’s a very dull party (Jon, Martin, a string of unseen ghosts) watching the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ghost Hunt UK </span>
  </em>
  <span>van pull off the stone driveway and peel down the lane. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Martin says to Jon. “I think maybe we should-” and he stops. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon knows how he feels. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon knows what he was going to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> "We can't just give up," he says, hating how he sounds even as he says it, "We can't - Martin, this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>house, and this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>property, and this is not. This is not fair." He knows he sounds childish, but he can't help it. He just wants things to be fair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin puts his hand on Jon's elbow, begins pulling him back towards the house, the four ghosts bobbing along silently behind him. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that nothing was fair?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're a half-full sort of person," Jon says suddenly, wrenching his elbow out of Martin's grasp. "You’re the optimist here, you’re the one that called us, you - you - you </span>
  <em>
    <span>hope for the best. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You can't tell me otherwise. What happened? Why so quick to give up?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I got </span>
  <em>
    <span>Georgie </span>
  </em>
  <span>hurt."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So, what, it only counts when it's other people?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Yes!" </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin looks frustrated and in the light of the dying sun, tragically handsome. "Of course it does! Jon, who is around to - to - to give a fuck about what happens to me except me? Of course it only counts when it's-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's fucking bollocks and you know it. I - Martin, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>would care if it was you. You would - you would care if it was me. Fucking hell, what about your Basira? Wouldn't she?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"She sent me in your direction, and look what that got me," Martin snaps, and then looks abruptly horrified. "No, I mean-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, I know we're pretty useless," Jon says and refuses to feel stung, "But at least we turned up, Martin. At least we tried. I - I-" He can feel something really mean building up in him, something hateful he doesn't want to give the opportunity to rise to the surface. "I need a minute. I need a break. I - I'll be back."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he storms off towards the woods, to the break in the hedge where he knows the folly lies. After a minute he hears dejected crunching, the sound of boots heading off towards the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spirit is waiting for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon knew he would be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hair is long and black and very pretty, down his back and over his shoulders almost to his waist. His eyes are a shining hazel, or at least, the ones in his face are; the ones tattooed over every joint Jon can see are done in thick black lines, more like runic tattoos than the more modern ones with slim single-needle lines and delicate detailing. His jeans are ripped badly, all down his thighs to his knees, and his boots are thick Doc Martens with a rubber sole a few inches thick, not that he needs the height. Jon reckons if the spirit was standing straight he would be a good head, if not more, above himself; he almost hopes the man keeps sitting, just because it's very difficult to act like a superior ghost-hunting diviner when the ghost in question is towering over him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I heard your argument," says the spirit, in a hoarse but crisp Southern English accent. "I think he probably just cares about you, you know."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, well, I care about him," Jon says brusquely. "But I'm not here to talk about - about him, or about me. I'm here for you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Not many people are."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not </span>
  <em>
    <span>many people."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The ghost laughs scratchily. "True, true. What do you want to know?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Your name, maybe. Who killed you, maybe."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ah. Some of the difficult ones."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon sits, cross-legged, at the base of a tree, still simmering with anger he's barely managed to wrestle a lid onto. "I have all the time in the world."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you," the spirit says, and looks at him for long enough to make Jon wriggle uncomfortably. "Do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>really?" </span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>just so you guys know, my update schedule might be slowing down a bit. i'll try and stick to the every-thursday time, but me and my girlfriend have just got back into the same country after 3 months apart so you can understand my priority isn't writing right at this second! i've run out of my stash of prewritten chapters, too, but i hope i can keep on course. if not i hope you all understand! <br/>&lt;33</p><p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Thickens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi guys! sorry for the wee wait, i hope you enjoy &lt;3</p><p>before you read on - there's some violence and gore here, from "Martin finally sees Sasha" to "It was a car crash". if that's a squick or trigger, skip to the second of those two lines &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[Video ID: A blurry photo of a man, blonde and blue-eyed, looking off past the lens. The photo is being filmed by someone with a shaky hand and a familiar voice: “Day one,” he is saying, “Investigation into the occurrences at Blackwood House begins. I am here with Sectioned - <em> oof-” </em> The sound of fist hitting clothes, and the voice resumes slightly winded, “I am here with a <em> friend </em>and officer of the law, how about that? Elias Bouchard, reporting.”</p><p>The camera turns around and we see the filmer - Elias as he is in the house, slight and sharp-featured, with dark eyes. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he says in a very bad American accent. “Are you coming or not, Emma?”</p><p>Video ID ends.]</p><p> </p><p>Martin finds that he's completely ran out of steam when he goes to the house, and only the little scratched and scarred thing inside him he likes to call his <em> pride </em> prevents him from going out and following Jon, apologising, asking him to stay. <em> Please don't leave me in this house all on my own. </em>He storms up the stairs all the same and wonders if Jon has ghosts telling him Martin's every move, informing him on Martin's little moods and activities; the knowledge that there are at least four things watching him all the time makes him even more frustrated than tiffs with the rude Londoner that's come to live in his house. At least Jon has the good grace to stay visible.</p><p>He strides straight down the first-floor corridor, paying entirely no heed to the paintings that line both the walls, the eyes from years and generations before judging him for not being Blackwood enough - not being rich enough - not being handsome enough to be worth the painting - not being talented enough to -</p><p>He scowls at the biggest portrait, and takes the staircase at the end of the corridor, the one that takes him right into the library. The carpet is soft and red and he's leaving muddy bootprints on it, and he finds he doesn't care.</p><p>He never really did. </p><p>The book he seizes upon is a handsomely-bound <em> Sonnets. </em>Martin always enjoyed them, when he had the chance to do them at GCSEs, and before he dropped out his English teacher gave him a little photocopied bundle of the ones he might have studied at A-Level if his mum hadn't -</p><p>In any case, Martin likes the sonnets. He likes thinking about someone being in love four hundred years ago, and loving someone else so much that Martin can know about it long into the future; he likes thinking about roses, and about ever-fixed marks. There is no impediment to the marriage of two minds, Shakespeare says, and Martin (although he feels it sort of sheepishly, like he knows it's naive) loves the romanticism of it.</p><p>The copy of the <em> Sonnets </em>is pretty. The edges are gold, and the cover is embossed with a tree, a very Tolkien-esque sort of a drawing, the tree hung with many kinds of simply stylized fruit. Martin sits on the floor by the bookshelf and opens it, his thumb lifting the corner of the cover very gently, as though it might fall apart if he handles it with anything other than the softest of care.</p><p>On the inside flyleaf, on a handsome red page, is written: <em> Dear Jonah, many Happy Returns. A gift in the hope that someday all might see that your eyes are truly nothing like the sun. With love from your Barnabas. </em></p><p>Martin turns, then, slowly and with his heart in his mouth, to the poem he thinks Barnabas makes reference to; a page that the reader has evidently turned to many a time, because the book falls naturally open at that spot.</p><p>And there, as he knew there would be as soon as he saw the dedication, there is a little bundle of paper, written in a hand very familiar to him by now.</p><p>"Tell Jon I couldn't wait," he murmurs to the air, although in truth he feels a sort of vindictive joy in having found it without him - he's felt useless, very useless, swept up in an investigation in his own house where he can play no part apart from bumbling host. Barnabas was involved in something beyond his own measure, that's obviously true, but he seems much more determined, much quicker to grasp his own fate than Martin is.</p><p>So he begins reading. He doesn't bother to call for Jon.</p><p>
  <em> February 1816 </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Dear Mordechai, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> First I must dispense with the niceties, although I know you care very little for the conventions of the written word. How you are, and how your family fare, and how you are enjoying the season in London after so much time on Dartmoor, away from the company of other learned men. How is your health, although my own knowledge of your good self prompts me to predict that reply, and the answer of a dozen others. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I will respond to the questions I know you will not ask. I myself am well, better than I might be, although my health remains in question after my trip to Moorland House, which I suspect will not spark the sympathy in your chest I might ask of you. My family are well, although I have not seen them since my aforementioned visit to the Lukas estate; when I wrote to my mother, she seemed faintly surprised at my presence, as though she had half-forgotten she had a son. I ascribe this to the length of time I have spent in London and with Jonah, and I admit it was a foolish idea to visit your family instead of  going back to my mother and the family home. I will not make that mistake again. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That out of the way, I must get to the true reason - the meat, I can hear Jonah say to me as though he were here - of me writing, although it must come as rather a surprise to you. I know my words were harsh when I left you, but you may pardon me if you choose to be so forgiving; my only offer of excuse is that I was shocked at the dynamic of a house so different from the one in which I was raised. I feared, although it seems foolish when I write it here, that you might have allowed me to wander forever on those foggy hills. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I apologise. My actions these days do not seem to reflect my own. </em>
</p><p><em> I am worried about Jonah, to put it plainly, and I want to know if you have seen him since your return to the city. I myself have not seen him since the day of the funeral, and now Albrecht is buried this two month I thought Jonah might </em>(here Martin can't read the next few words; they've been scratched out with a ferociously sharp point.)</p><p>
  <em> I did not know his attachment to Albrecht ran so deeply, although that is entirely my fault. Jonah has always been the more attentive of the pair of us. He often teases me so - he calls me typical. Of course, he is anything but. I had word from Robert, last week, and it has put me near frantic with worry. I have paced, and bitten at hands, and snapped at friends, and been a disgrace to know; eventually I remembered our friendship, Mordechai, frayed with disuse as it might be. I cannot turn to anyone. You must understand. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Robert wrote to me of a great many books Albrecht found in his summering in Germany. He wrote to me of Jonah's fascination with them, something I confess I was completely ignorant of, and he wrote to me also of Jonah's obsession for visiting Albrecht in the depth of his sickness, in the guise of visiting his sickness but in truth to read the books of his library. This worried me deeply, although I do not know why. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Mordechai, you must understand. Whatever Jonah has, whatever thrall he has fallen under, I fear it is one of a deep and sinister nature. I would not turn to you else I had anyone else to trust, but these days I feel as though all of those who once cared about Jonah have turned their faces. When I met Jonathan, some fortnight ago, and I mentioned quite carelessly the hunting we used to enjoy around Blackwood House, he pretended he had no memory of them - he seemed deeply uncomfortable, Mordechai, and ran away from my company as quickly as he could. I have written to him since and received no reply but a quick apology for his absence and a plea for me to understand. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Although you may mock me for my emotion, I confess I feel deeply alone these past few weeks. If Jonah were here I would tell him, and there would be no need for you to learn of my loneliness, but no man is an island. You are the last pillar upon which our community stands, upon which our gatherings would lean on, and I beg you if you have any news of where I might find Jonah, please write to me as soon as you learn of it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> You know too much my weaknesses. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Your servant ever, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Barnabas Bennett </em>
</p><p>And Martin finds that he can taste salt, or something wet, and when he touches his cheeks there are tears there. </p><p> </p><p>“Your name,” says Jon, settling on the ground with his hand on the top of the skull; the spirit has split from his physical body, at least, and is now sitting against one of the pillars of the folly. Jon himself is beside the bones. “Your name - that’s an easy one. Let’s start there.” </p><p>The ghost laughs a little, hands on his knees. "If you say so. It's Gerard Keay, although that'll be of no relevance to you. I died in '85, as far as I can remember, and you don't look much older than that."</p><p>Jon shrugs. "Try more… late eighties. But - no. I'm no... long-lost family member, I'm afraid. My name is Jon, and I'm from London, and I - well, I'm here because I-"</p><p>"I'm not <em> stupid. </em>I know what you let me do to you," says Gerard dryly. He lifts his hand to his cheek and brushes a long, straight strand of hair behind his ear. "I... appreciate what you do. Did. Are doing. And I... understand you want some answers. So my name is Gerard Keay."</p><p>"Thank you," Jon lets his hand rest on the round skull, his thumb tucked just into the crest of one of the eyesockets. "And - do you know what's keeping you in the world?"</p><p>Gerard laughs. It's oddly toned, and scratchy, but then Jon supposes he hasn't had much reason to laugh since 1985 - and what turns a man into a bundle of bones in twenty years? What dismembers a body? Foxes, or something sinister? "You mean my tether," he says, when he's stopped his humourless laugh, "That's what you mean, right? Would you believe me if I said my tether was my death? The <em> secret </em>of it? I've spoken to nobody in forty years. I've - I have this, this, this all inside me. I... what is your job, Jon? What would you say it was?"</p><p>"If I didn't think people would laugh, I'd say - ghost hunter," Jon says, and he can feel his cheeks flushing scarlet. "But. But obviously people do laugh, so I don't tend to say that."</p><p>"I called myself a <em> mystery solver," </em> Gerard says, and his eyes mist over, remembering something long-past. "Me and this - you don't need the sorry backstory. This woman. She took me from someplace I would rather forget, and we did the whole... legal thing, the legal adoption or <em> whatever, </em>and she - we used to go around the country. She was a journalist, although I don't think you'll have heard of her either."</p><p>"Try me."</p><p>"Gertrude Robinson," Gerard watches Jon's face for signs of recognition, and Jon feels truly bad about the lack of it; the name rings absolutely no bells, no matter how hard he searches. "Oh - no bother. She... we... began working together when I was sixteen or seventeen. Old enough to decide I wanted to go with her, you know. I used to think she liked me, but now I think she just wanted an assistant, and... um. You know. The system is a very good place to find assistants."</p><p>Jon says nothing. He's good at saying nothing.</p><p>"We were investigating. Around here. The disappearances of - a few people, I suppose, but one of them was James Wright?" Gerard phrases it as a question, but again Jon shakes his head.</p><p>"I suppose you wouldn't have heard of him," Gerard smiles ruefully, "He was... it was a missing-persons from 1973, and me and Gertrude were just chasing up leads. She thought... there was a conspiracy she believed in, I suppose. I didn't ever ask her for the details. I was just the hired muscle."</p><p>"Hired muscle," Jon repeats, looking Gerard up and down; his ghostly form does nothing to help how waifish he looks, thin and underfed, tall and stretched out like he's missing more than a few square meals.</p><p>Gerard looks embarrassed to have been seen, properly seen. "I - forget it. We were investigating James Wright. He had disappeared here, and... never been seen again, and the woman who lived in the house, Florence, rang up Gertrude and said she had permission to search the grounds if she wanted. I think she was missing the company. I never got into the house, but Gertrude did; she told me to go and look in the woods while she distracted Florence, in case she had anything to do with the disappearance, but really I think... well, it had been a long trip. I think Gertrude was just tired. I don't... hold it against her. I really don't. But that's - that's - that's what happened. So I was in the woods."</p><p>He closes his eyes and takes a deep, fortifying, utterly useless breath. Jon feels it painfully in the centre of his chest, like something tugging on him. For every inhale Gerry takes, Jon loses a little bit of something, a little bit of sticking power; of course he isn't about to <em> tell </em>Gerry that. It isn't the responsibility of the spirit.</p><p>He wishes Georgie were here. He wishes he could hold somebody's hand.</p><p>(You held <em> Martin's </em>hand, didn't you, and you listened to him talk, didn't you?)</p><p>(Shut up. Focus. Ghost.)</p><p>(Gerard.)</p><p>"I'm sorry," he hears Gerard say; Jon hadn't realised he'd closed his eyes, but he can feel how hard the bone is digging into his thumb, how tightly he must be gripping it. "I'm sorry - if this is too much. You can stop. You can stop."</p><p>"No," Jon forces himself to say, even though every bone up and down his spine is aching for him to stop. <em> Stop. </em>Man was not built to be - conduit, the way he finds he's becoming in Blackwood House. Four ghosts. Spirits. Something powerful enough to move. "No, no. I'm not stopping, I'm sorry, I - please, continue." He forces his eyes open, and sees Gerard looking pained, almost, a hand reached out halfway across the folly towards him. "Please."</p><p>"I'm sorry."</p><p>"Please," Jon repeats, softly.</p><p>Gerard breathes again, but shallowly, so Jon doesn't feel the prickling pull as deeply as he did before. "I was in the woods," he says, in a cautious sort of voice, his eyes focused solely on Jon, "I was in the woods and I - and I died. I died. Gertrude never... I died."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Jon says this time. He pours all he can into the spirit, into Gerard, everything he has in him that isn't keeping him alive, into one point on the back of Gerard's closest hand, and then he reaches out and grabs it. For a second his fingers pass through skin, but then Gerard must realise what's going on; his face shutters in shock, and his thumb closes around Jon's knuckles, and they sit in silence, Jon heaving for breath through black vision, holding hands.</p><p>Holding hands. Gerard's skin is soft, and Jon has made it warm, and he feels just as he might have done when he was alive.</p><p>"Thank you," Gerard says after a long, long pause. He squeezes Jon's hand. "I know this - is. Difficult."</p><p>"But needed."</p><p>"But needed," he agrees with an incline of the head. "So I died here, in the woods, and I don't think Gertrude noticed, but I died all the same."</p><p>"And who killed you?"</p><p>"Have you ever seen a picture of James Wright?" Gerard asks, turning the subject suddenly. "On the news or anything. I don't know how high-profile... I don't know if it's gained any traction since."</p><p>"No," Jon says regretfully. "No, I haven't even heard of him."</p><p>"Okay. So... say he's tall, and blonde, and he had blue eyes in all the pictures me and Gertrude saw of him. Liked sort of, like, tan-coloured clothes, y'know, dressed like... well, dressed for the early seventies. And I turned around and I saw <em> him." </em></p><p>"You found James Wright?"</p><p>"I saw through him," Gerard corrects himself, "I could see the trees through his body and his eyes - his eyes were <em> green. </em>Bright green. He was all twisted up. He... was holding a knife."</p><p>“Holding it? But ghosts can’t-”</p><p>“Oh, I learned. I learned that, certainly, after he killed me.”</p><p>“He <em> killed </em>you?” </p><p>“I-” Gerard opens his mouth to say more, and Jon burns all over, and every time he blinks he fears it’ll be the last time, and he’ll wake up once more to Martin touching his forehead and telling him everything’s going to be okay. </p><p>“Please,” Jon says again, desperately now, and just at that moment he hears a high, distinctly feminine scream from the house, and his concentration is completely broken - </p><p>His hand falls through Gerard’s, and his body too, tumbling through air he had been unconsciously leaning against, and when Jon gathers himself enough to look around Gerard is nowhere to be seen. There is just the skull, with eyes inside both sockets, green and unblinking and unlidded. </p><p>Jon wants more than anything else to lie and bring more of his strength to him, but he can think of only two people who would be screaming like that, and both of them are dead. There’s no time to rest. </p><p>Unsteadily, toppling from tree to tree for support, Jon stumbles as fast as he can back to the house.</p><p>Towards the sound of a woman in pain. </p><p> </p><p>Martin can hear the scream. He's sitting on the front steps of Blackwood House, hands over his ears, eyes screwed shut, head down and almost between his knees, but the scream doesn't let up in how high it is, how piercing it is, how loud it is; nor does it die down, or lose any of its potency, despite how long it's been continuing. For a horrible second he thinks he might actually have died, finally, and gone to hell.</p><p>"Martin?"</p><p>He peels his eyes open to see Jon, and he forgets he's meant to be annoyed with Jon in the first place, he's so happy to see another human person. Jon is swaying back and forth but still, unbelievably, on his feet, one thin hand gripping the carved stone at the base of the stairs, a lawn ornament from decades past. "Martin," he repeats, and closes his eyes, and he looks upset, maybe, or just totally exhausted. "Can you hear that?"</p><p>Martin can't make a noise. He just nods.</p><p>"I think it's..." Jon tries to step forward and trips, stumbles on the rough stone ground, and Martin steps up before he's thinking about it so Jon falls instead onto the crook of one of his arms, and not onto the steps. "Thank you. Thank - thank you. I think it's one of the girls... one of... Daisy, or Sasha, and if you can hear it-"</p><p>"Oh, Christ," Martin says, when he can focus long enough to think. "Oh my god-"</p><p>"Come on, come on," Jon tries to walk up the steps but something has wrecked him; he's too weak to even really shrug off Martin's arm, and so Martin half-carries, half-supports him up to the front door, lying open in the summer heat. "Come on, come on," Jon keeps repeating, half-delirious almost, "Sasha, Daisy, Tim... <em> Sasha! Daisy!" </em></p><p>The house is almost offensively normal.</p><p>The scream is still continuing, but being closer to Jon means that Martin finds he can hold it, cope with it, just a little bit better. It makes his ears hurt and his teeth sting and he wants more than anything to just <em> go, </em> run and keep running until he's out of earshot and somewhere warm and safe. London. The middle of a field somewhere. <em> Anywhere </em>that isn't here. The entrance hall is just as they left it that morning, saying goodbye to Melanie and Georgie, coats lying over the banisters, a few books they'd been reading on the hall table, the umbrella stand on one end where Melanie had been searching inside for the basement key. How long ago does that feel? There's the little splatter of blood on the hall tiles where either Jon or Melanie had dripped, after the chandelier incident. There's where Georgie had left her coat; she couldn't get it over her broken arm, and so she had flung it with the hand that worked onto the steps, where it still lies.</p><p>Jon makes a soft, hurt noise. "Upstairs," he says, face pressed into Martin's arm. "She's - upstairs - library-"</p><p>"Who's telling you?" Martin looks around warily, seeing ghosts in every folded reflection, unwilling yet to trust the information Jon receives and believes so blindly. "Is there anyone else-"</p><p>"I know. I can feel it," Jon says. Martin looks down at him.</p><p>Were his eyes always green? <em> That </em>shade of green?</p><p>"Okay," he says slowly, and he's never felt more useless than he does now, just big stupid Martin who physically can't see the thing he's being attacked by, just big stupid Martin who's only there to make sure people don't hurt themselves on the way down. Big stupid Martin. You can always rely on him, except not even then because at the first sign of danger big stupid Martin is running as fast as he can in the other direction. "Okay," he says again, and he and Jon shuffle towards the stairs as fast as he can pull them, Jon so clearly beyond the point of no return he's hurtling into someplace further than that. The scream gets louder.</p><p>"Sasha," Jon mumbles, "It's Sasha, it's Sasha - we have to <em> hurry-" </em></p><p>Martin bites his lip against the swear that's building up there, and hurries.</p><p>Big stupid Martin.</p><p>The library is on the second floor, and as Martin and Jon hurry down the corridor by the bedrooms, he feels for the first time <em> watched, </em> all the little paintings in their portraits turning to look at them, like a show they've just been allowed entry into. All Martin can see when he looks at them is green. His own eyes are blue, or at least, he thinks they were blue; it was something his mother always held against him, because hers were brown, and she used to tell him he could have at least had the courtesy not to look <em> entirely </em>like his father.</p><p>Big stupid Martin, that's him. He just does what he's told.</p><p>Up the stairs to the library and the scream is definitely louder and Jon is growing heavier and heavier. Martin knows he doesn't mean to, and he would be a pretty poor sort to hold it against him, but it's taking all he has not to just carry the bastard up the rest of the stairs. He's done it before - he knows he <em> can. </em></p><p>"Sasha!" Jon shouts and it's more of a wail, really, and his eyes are very green and they're hypnotising and Martin thinks it's just one more thing that makes him far more handsome than he should be, really.</p><p>Big stupid Martin and his big stupid heart. <em> Ghosts. </em> If he had been anyone sensible he would have just hired stonemasons for the roof, and someone in to do the pipes, and he would have moved in with Basira for a few weeks and sold the place to a hotel chain or something, and he would have never even entertained the thought that he might be haunted, that something might want to kill him, that it might be a good idea to fund a bunch of fucking <em> ghost hunters </em>living in his house.</p><p>"It's Sasha," Jon says desperately as they turn the last corner of the staircase up into the library, and Martin -</p><p>Martin finally sees Sasha.</p><p>The library is a mess. Books lie everywhere, not just from the shelf Georgie had knocked on top of her; the shelves themselves are still standing, but there are books everywhere, as though someone just took their arm and swept it across the entire shelf, knocking all the contents with brute force to the ground. There are loose pages everywhere, too, in the air and on the ground and stuck to the windows with the morning condensation, all over the shelves, ripped at the edges, and Martin has time to wonder vaguely how much money he's lost here, floating in the air in some ghost's anger.</p><p>He sees all this in a heartbeat, though, because the focus of the room is the woman in the centre, floating there, <em> screaming. </em>There's something in her hand, something round, like a rubber bouncy ball.</p><p>She is small, and slight, and dark in both skin and hair, and she is the most broken Martin has ever seen a person apart from on those horrible medical documentaries on TV. Her face is torn, one cheek flapping away from the body of the skin, revealing the teeth in all their length, tucked into red gums. One of her eyes is ruptured, just a bloody mess on her face. Her chest has completely caved in, bones cracking out from some central impact. There is gristle, and red things, and soft things, and white bone inside that, cracked ribs curving unnaturally out from the skin and the body. Her legs are both off at odd angles, like both of them have been broken violently; one is just skewed, but the other is a mess, the kneecap cracked and splattering out from the torn skin, the calf bone snapped in half and protruding. She is screaming, and Martin is sure the only reason she isn't crying is because she hasn't any eyes left to cry with.</p><p>"Sasha," Jon says once more, faintly, and then his knees finally give way beneath him and he's falling, only his arm looped around Martin's neck stopping him from thudding to the hardwood floor.</p><p>"Oh my god," Martin says, and then he turns around and vomits. He can't help it. When he blinks he sees that kneecap, all the little shards of bone, like when you drop a glass on the floor and the little fragments scatter everywhere and cut you six months later, just when you've forgotten about it.</p><p>He's ashamed about the vomiting, and he thinks it's just the once, but when he turns around and sees her again he has to spin back again, hand to his stomach, gagging nothing but acid now, acid that tastes of bubbles and sourness.</p><p>"Sasha."</p><p>And Sasha, if that's the ghost, keeps screaming and screaming and screaming and Martin wants her to stop. <em> Why won't she stop? </em></p><p>"Make her stop," Martin gasps, wiping his bottom lip, "Make her <em> stop!" </em></p><p>He sees Jon, now sitting on the ground since Martin's let him go, stretching out one hand to the woman floating high above them. The green is shining, now, bright and lurid in his face, and Martin is struck by how <em> tacky </em>it looks. It doesn't look real. He expects at any second for Jon to turn around and squirt water from a flower on his lapel, or something, because none of this can truly be real. None of this can be happening.</p><p>"Sasha," Jon says, and his voice is quiet and steady and it cuts through the scream like a knife through butter, "Sasha, please stop."</p><p>And she looks at them long enough for Martin to see how full of life she must have been when she was alive, and for him to see the knob she's holding in her hand, the old-fashioned round top gearsticks Land Rovers used to have when they were classics, and she looks at them and she's about to say something -</p><p>And then she isn't looking at them anymore, and there isn't anything in the room but the ruins of books long ago unread, and Martin feels like he's going to be sick again.</p><p>When he looks at Jon, Jon isn't looking at him. He's just sitting against the wall, his legs out in front of him, staring blankly into the air, touching his cheek with one hand.</p><p>Martin throws up.</p><p> </p><p>“It was a car crash,” Tim can’t look at anyone. Tim can’t feel anything, anymore, except a vague ringing in his ears from the sound of her scream, and the patch on his shoulder where Daisy is trying to touch it and her hand is falling through. “She died in a car crash.”</p><p>Martin is sitting at the kitchen table, his head partially pillowed in his hands, his eyes distant and unseeing. Daisy is behind Tim, doing nothing and saying nothing but still there. Even Elias has made an appearance, sitting in the air beside Martin looking pensive and confused - and Jon is there, too, of course, looking five seconds from falling over, leaning on the long bar by the range, gripping onto it with all his strength. Every sentence Tim says Jon echoes, for the benefit of Martin, who doesn't look like any of this is bringing him satisfaction.</p><p>"I saw it, but I was the only one. Daisy was... you were where, in the gun room? And Elias was... funny," Tim gives Elias an odd, sideways look, "I can never remember where you were about shit like this."</p><p>"I was in the basement," Elias says smoothly, his face as blank as a paper mask, "I - well. You know as well as I do, Tim. Unfinished business doesn't come cheap."</p><p>"It was a car crash, anyway, nothing spiritual, nothing abnormal," Tim can't stop thinking about her. Should he have said something to her? She just wanted to go and finish <em> The Little Princess. </em> It had been her favourite book when she was little, apparently, and Jon has been turning pages for her whenever she asks him. "Happened in, what, 1982? She was up at the house with a load of other people, some bloke from the village that she was friends with, and the lake out - the lake used to be a pretty popular drinking spot, because everyone knew old Florence wasn't fit enough to chase them away <em> or </em>canny enough to call the police every time she heard a noise from the woods. So she... I heard them, I'm not too sure about the other two. But I heard them. I used to," Tim pauses, breathes, smiles mirthlessly, "I used to be jealous of all the kids that came up here looking for some fun. I missed it, y'know? I missed it."</p><p><em> "I missed it," </em>Jon murmurs to Martin.</p><p>(Tim wishes he could tell the only living, moderately healthy person in the room to do something, but when he looks at the horror in Martin's face he thinks maybe it's good he can't.)</p><p>(He reckons he has about five minutes before Jon collapses.)</p><p>(Again.)</p><p>"So it was a car crash," prompts Daisy softly.</p><p>Tim smiles at her, and continues.</p><p>"There were five or six of them, and I think Sasha was the oldest, or maybe just the most mature? The most <em> sensible, </em> definitely," Tim laughs coolly, "They pulled up, this absolutely <em> darling </em> little car, bright orange, a - Mini, I think Sasha said it was? And all piled out, and Sasha said, I heard her, she said she wouldn't be drinking so she could drive them all home before they got stuck on the estate after dark. I <em> heard </em> her. I was listening from the library, see, and I really wanted them to come into the house but obviously - obviously they wouldn't. It was silly. I was just... <em> bored," </em> Tim looks at Jon and he wishes he could feel guilty about how far past the point of no return he's pushing the man. He looks mostly dead. "I was bored and I was only... I was only twenty-nine when I died. Fuck's sake. I was <em> bored </em> and the only thing in the library was a copy of <em> Great Expectations </em>and I - it's boring anyway. But they all headed off into the woods, and I didn't see them for the rest of the day. I heard them plenty. They had something that was playing music, something... you remember," he directs this at Daisy, "It woke you up."</p><p>"It did," Daisy nods.</p><p>Elias just looks sort of resigned and sad, but he wears it so well, and Tim doesn't feel like interrupting that. Elias always looks sort of resigned and sad.</p><p>"They came back as the sun was setting," says Tim.</p><p><em> "They came back as the sun was setting," </em>says Jon, and then with no warning at all he loses his grip on the range, his legs going from beneath him as though someone has just pulled a string taut across them.</p><p>"Jon!"</p><p>
  <em> "Jon-" </em>
</p><p>Tim keeps going. Martin, out of his seat now and with one hand on Jon's back, glares at the air when Jon keeps speaking, but Tim refuses to stop - if he does, he thinks he might never start again - and he can see that thin glint of defiance in Jon's eyes, the look of foolhardy determination, that tells him Jon has no intention of beginning to care about how healthy this will make him; if he didn't five minutes ago, he won't now. So Tim keeps going, and he knows Martin resents the pair of them and <em> Tim keeps going. </em></p><p>Jon's voice is thin, high, reedy. He sounds like if he put any more effort into it, he wouldn't be able to talk at all.</p><p>"They came back as the sun was setting and they looked... worse for the wear, I suppose, if you want to put it nicely. If you want to put it meanly, they were <em> plastered. </em> Hammered, fucked, shitfaced, completely off their nuts, and Sasha was sort of shepherding them towards the car, y'know? But then a few of them lay down on the grass, or - well, I couldn't hear too great, but some of them lay down anyhow and Sasha had a blazing row with one of the other ones. I have no idea what their names were. She said she needed to be home, someone needed the car, and then one of them was sick and Sasha sort of, like, threw up her hands in the air and said <em> fine, i'm going, </em>like that," Tim poses like Sasha does - did - does, hands on hips, all pointy and full of energy, "And she got into the car. She was sober, I would swear it to you."</p><p>"And she started the car,"</p><p>
  <em> "And she started the car," </em>
</p><p>"And it wasn't going very fast,"</p><p>
  <em> "And it wasn't going very fast," </em>
</p><p>"And then it turned,"</p><p>
  <em> "And then it turned," </em>
</p><p>"And I swear I saw her face and she was screaming just like that,"</p><p>
  <em> "And I swear I saw her face and she was screaming just like that," </em>
</p><p>"And she crashed into the side of the house,"</p><p>
  <em> "And she... crashed into the side of the... house..." </em>
</p><p>"But she wasn't strapped in or anything, she was just..."</p><p>
  <em> "She was just..." </em>
</p><p>"And when they pulled her out..."</p><p>
  <em> "And when they pulled..." </em>
</p><p>"And they said she was drunk..."</p><p>Jon presses the flat of his palm to his throat. His mouth opens and closes but no words come out.</p><p>"She wasn't drunk, though, I promise," Tim says, although Martin can no longer hear him and both Daisy and Elias both know the end of the story, "She wasn't drunk. And I saw her crash, I <em> saw her crash, </em> and I promise you the brake lights on that car were glowing the entire time. The entire time. There's no way she could have been going that fast that quickly, that <em> bad, </em>unless someone else was - was - was fucking with the car."</p><p>"Tim," Daisy says quietly, as Martin pulls Jon to his feet and helps him out of the kitchen, "Tim, where's Elias gone?"</p><p>Tim turns to where Elias had been, but there's nobody there. </p><p> </p><p>"Martin."</p><p>It's the day after. Martin is sitting in the library, surrounded by fluttering scraps of paper, head buried in his phone; there's the clicking of fake typewriter noises, as his thumbs feverishly fly across the screen. Jon thinks he looks unreal with the sun shining in through the window and onto the blonde of his hair, haloing him in an almost unfairly beautiful, heavy-handed metaphor of light. He looks up and smiles just a little. "Good morning, Jon."</p><p>Jon feels <em> terrible. </em>He had managed to make it to bed last night without falling over, but just barely, and Martin had to help him up the stairs - but even sleep had come difficult to him, and when it had it was fractured, wild with the things Gerard had told him, the image of Sasha screaming, the odd story Tim had given them. In between he had seen who he imagines must be Barnabas, a tall man, a blonde man, someone who looks uncommonly like Martin, chasing forlornly after someone who refuses to slow down to allow him to see his face. </p><p>So, yes. Jon feels terrible. He doesn't want Martin to know, though - after Georgie's dramatic exit, and his own fit of drama yesterday, he thinks Martin can do without the worry. "Are you okay?"</p><p>"I'm… fine," Martin says slowly, "Or as fine as I guess you would expect me to be. Are <em> you </em>okay?"</p><p>"Yes," Jon says, and then at Martin's sceptical look, "Okay, no. No, I'm not. But I'm better than I expected I would be, considering. There was just a lot of… <em> stuff. </em>A lot of stuff to think about." He hasn't managed to mention Gerard to Martin, and he doesn't know why. Gerard feels personal and private, and Jon thinks the spirit would probably be resentful of any attempts to integrate him into the rest of the house. Resentful of anything Jon might do to introduce him to anyone else. "But I'm - I mean, I'm still alive, I guess. That's better than most in here."</p><p>Martin laughs shakily. "Are you trying to be comforting?"</p><p>"It isn't working, is it," Jon smiles at him and steps further into the room, sinking into a chair opposite Martin. From this angle the sun bathes his cheeks in pale, sparkling light, and he looks - </p><p>He looks - </p><p>Jon finds he could look at him for a long time, and never tire of looking.</p><p>"Not particularly, no," Martin smiles back at him. "But thanks for trying. I keep thinking… I keep thinking, you know, if we were <em> normal </em>we would be out of here. Back to London. Hell, just down to the village, but not still here. They'll say we were asking for something to go wrong, really, won't they?"</p><p>"Who will, the coroners?"</p><p>"The first responders," Martin laughs and the sun shines on his teeth and Jon looks. Jon laughs.</p><p>"The unsolved mystery gang will go wild, won't they," Jon says and Martin laughs harder, the slightly manic noise of someone who hasn't had very much to find funny in the last few weeks. </p><p>"I was looking for more letters," he says, thumb pressed to the corner of his eye, "Or more notes, or… anything, really. I keep thinking it's something really obvious, you know, like the last piece, and my… well, you know my friend Basira?"</p><p>“Yes, vaguely,” Jon says, although he’s only heard of Basira that time when Martin was monologuing to him, unaware Jon was actually listening. “She works in the… she’s in the police, isn’t she? In London?”</p><p>Martin gives him a surprised, pleased expression, and Jon is glad he guessed right. “Yeah. She got transferred recently. She won’t say… or maybe she <em> can’t </em>say, I don’t know, but either way I don’t actually know where or what she got transferred into. But she keeps messaging me about things. About… about names, and places near this house. I think she’s investigating something down here. And - and yesterday, on the phone, she said she might be seeing me sooner than I thought, and I… well. It’s been on my mind more than it should.”</p><p>“Oh?” Jon tries to school his features into the politely interested, his chin tucked into his curved palm. “Why is it - why is it worrying you?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” Martin sets one of the pages down and looks at him, properly <em> looks </em>at him, and Jon thinks for the third time in as many minutes that he really is handsome. “I don’t - I don’t know. I think it’s because I - everything else in this house is under my control. Or just - or just, I think, something I started. Something I found. I don’t want Basira to come down here and say, oh actually, here’s another ten murders that happened on the grounds, or something like that. I want it to be… I want it to be…”</p><p>“On your terms.”</p><p>Martin shrugs. “On my terms, I suppose. I want it to be… I want to <em> help. </em> I feel like such a spare part around here, sometimes, when you’re doing your thing, or when something like <em> yesterday </em>happens. I mean. What am I meant to do about that? Just be nice at it until the thing goes away?”</p><p>“You do plenty,” Jon says, awkward now the conversation has turned sincere, unsure of what to do with the bundle of trust Martin has placed in his hands. “You do plenty, Martin. I mean, what would have happened yesterday if you weren’t there? I’d be - well, I’d be dead in the woods somewhere, or collapsed in the front lawns, and - I certainly wouldn’t be here. You keep us on solid, solid ground. You know?”</p><p>“That’s nice of you to say.”</p><p>“I’m not just saying it,” Jon screws his face up in frustration, “I- Martin, I wouldn’t just <em> say things.” </em></p><p>“No, that’s true. You’re not the sort of man who says things.”</p><p>Jon makes a face. “Don’t… I don’t want you to lightheart this away. I appreciate you, Martin.” And then he immediately feels like a fool of the highest degree for saying something so sincere in the cold light of day, right where anyone can take it as fact. </p><p>Martin smiles. It’s a little bit sad and a little bit sweet all at once. “I - well, then, <em> thank </em>you Jon. And I appreciate… you, too. I - you didn’t have to stick around when Georgie and Melanie left, but I’m glad you did.”</p><p>“Of course I did.”</p><p>Jon realises they’re just sitting smiling at one another in silence, and his face feels very hot. “Um.”</p><p>If Martin feels half as awkward as Jon does, he makes a good job of hiding it. "I don't want to think about ghosts for the rest of my life," he says, putting one page aside and picking up another. "I don't want to think about being murdered, or about... about car crashes, or <em> ghosts, </em>or mysteries, ever ever again."</p><p>"But who will be my sidekick?" Jon jokes weakly. "Every Barnaby needs a helpful Sergeant."</p><p>The corner of Martin's mouth lifts just a little. "I think, in the light of things, neither of us would make a very good fit for a common or garden country detective. Don't you?"</p><p>"Oh, you're selling yourself short. We could be <em> great </em>hapless detectives."</p><p>Martin covers his mouth in a laugh. "Be careful what you say or I'll think you missed a career in - in storyboarding for the Beeb. Haunted old house. Now <em> there's </em>a plotline you've never seen on a Sunday night on BBC Three."</p><p>"Speak for yourself," Jon kicks his leg out in Martin's direction, and then bends to lift a heap of the papers. "Can I help with any of this? You look a little bit like... oh, the bloke rolling the stone up the hill. Or the girls who filled all those water jars."</p><p>"This task has an ending to it, but sure, if you want to," Martin shoves a heap of torn books aside, and both of them ignore the splattered bloodstains on the paper. "I'm just hunting through for any handwriting, at the minute, letter or not. I want to know... I feel like whatever Daisy mentioned happened in 1818 is important to the rest of this, y'know? So I want to know. And I feel bad for Barnabas. He's getting jerked around this way and that and I don't think any of the people he's writing to, or writing about, I don't think... any of them particularly care about his comfort."</p><p>Jon takes the bundle Martin hands him. "He is dead, you know. Either way. Not much you can do about it."</p><p>"I can remember him," Martin says, looking a little wistful, "And that's more than... well, it's evidently more than <em> some </em>people get."</p><p>Chou chooses this moment to crawl from where she was sleeping in Jon's breast pocket out and onto the cloth of his t-shirt, where she glares at him - lack of attention, no doubt, she's turning into a fussy beast - and leaps from Jon's shoulder onto the floor, scurrying over paper and book covers and floorboards to get to Martin. She pushes her head against his thumb, purring in a very self-satisfied way.</p><p>"Even my <em> cat </em>likes you better," Jon grumbles.</p><p>Martin giggles, holding his hand straight to allow Chou to pet herself against him. "Not my fault I'm so irresistible, apparently. Hi, Chou! Is Jon being really horrible again?"</p><p>"Yes," Jon says, although he refuses to allow himself to know which statement he was really replying to. "She's a little ball of betrayal, aren't you, Chou?"</p><p>Chou crawls up Martin's sleeve to sit next to the collar of his shirt, her soft claws digging as gently as a cat can into the body of his collar, her tail swinging around his shoulder. She looks even smaller on Martin, or perhaps makes Martin even bigger, but the sight is an endearing one, Martin impossibly kind with this little kitten curled up on him, smiling as though he can't imagine someone so small would want to stay there. "Jon, are you sure she's-"</p><p>"She's fine there," Jon says, and he knows he's smiling a foolish amount and he finds he really can't help it. "She knows where she's safe."</p><p>And Martin's pleased little smile is almost enough to make up for all the rest of it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i know nobody enjoys the author rants in the notes, but i feel like i need to give you all a wee explanation for why i've been awol from both the archive and my social medias - everything's happening all at once! i've been back with my girlfriend for the first time in three months and definitely enjoying that, but also i'm moving out of my student house in two days and the landlord is being very stereotypically a wanker, so we're all quite distracted. on top of that it's my birthday in two days (woo, the big two-oh) and on top of all that, because i really love pain, i've signed up for the 2020 rusty quill big bang, the deadline for which is in mid-july. so as you can imagine i'm really fighting for that half an hour of writing at the end of each day!</p><p>i have 1k written for chapter 7, and i do have the whole fic planned out, but at the moment my life is so mental that i can't reliably predict when it'll be done. if you want to know, i'll be posting updates on my twitter (sweetlyblue) and my tumblr (softlyblues) or you can shoot me an ask on my cc (sweetlysofts) </p><p>sorry for the big essay, but i hope you all understand! thank you for sticking with the story so far, it means a lot &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Bone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hey, guys! long time no see!</p><p>hopefully that is the last of the weekly absences until the end of this fic. my girlfriend and i are apart once more (sobs) but not for long, and everything with the landlord has been sorted, so plain sailing from here on out! </p><p>wish i could say the same for the Boys, but sadly... jonmartin have a ways to go. hope you enjoy &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: A YouTube video titled </span>
  <em>
    <span>absences, announcements, giveaways &amp; more! </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie and Georgie sit at a desk littered with books and mugs, posters of films and art prints on the wall behind them, clearly a set created specifically for this sort of video. Georgie looks tired, and her arm is still in a cast; Melanie is smiling, but it looks like it takes her some effort. “Hey, guys. We’ve been a bit absent from social media recently, in case you hadn’t noticed, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that we’re missing the small, speccy weirdo of the team. We have a few announcements in that vein.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Georgie cuts in, smiling at the camera. “We’ve been undergoing a longer private investigation outside London, and Jon’s still helping down there. Mel and I are back to as regularly-scheduled content as we ever get, but as you guys can see, we didn’t escape the investigation completely healthy.” She waves her broken arm up and down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But don’t worry,” Melanie cuts in, the beat of their conversation measured and rehearsed, “Because while we wait for Jon to join us we have super exciting prizes for you guys! So, in a collaboration with Wyrm Weevyl on Etsy and on Instagram, we have…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The video continues in this vein for fifteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>October 1817</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My dear Barnabas, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have no time for convention. I write to you as a warning. I know you are well for I saw you only last week, and in truth this letter will seem greatly at odds with the manner I greeted you at that meeting - but permit me to write this in any case, dispensing with the need for polite convention. There may be very little time. There may even be no time at all, but I owe it to you to try my best. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I do not have time to tell you all of the work I am doing at Blackwood House with him. I am sorry, Barnabas, for if anyone deserves to know the full truth it is you. Truly, in life none of us are blameless, and I share in this fault, for although I did not first understand the unchristian, unholy nature of the work as deeply as I do now, I cannot make the claim to innocence that the person I once was had privilege to. In truth, I am responsible as Jonah is for the sins I feel we have all become wrapped in. The only person I feel who keeps that treasured state of mind is you. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I know Mordechai courts you, even if you might not know it yourself. Not as openly as Jonah courts you, and as you in return feel for him, but in Mordechai’s case I fear you remain oblivious. You must see - you are attractive to them for more than your good looks and charm, although I am sure that does nothing to dissuade them from your company. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Forgive me. Even in this, our time of greatest peril, I ramble. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Barnabas, your life is in danger. More than it has ever been before. I aided Jonah these past seven years, but I can no longer when I know the truth of his intent. I think you can imagine. Since I met you that night at the Scott’s, so long now ago, I have aided Jonah in building -</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In building,” Jon reads again, and then flips over the page. “In building, in building, in - in - where’s the second page?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks almost ill with tiredness, up most of the night with Jon searching through the library for more notes from 1818, more help that could tell them what happened that night Daisy heard about, something that might - </span>
  <em>
    <span>might - </span>
  </em>
  <span>prompt a forward in the mystery they now wrap themselves in. “There was only the one page that I could see,” he says. “I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, don’t be, don’t be, I just-” Jon sighs, and he knows it isn’t helping any. “I just want to know. I - everywhere we go there’s something holding us up, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon turns to Tim, who’s taken to following him around the house looking wan and lost, as though if he’s left alone then the thing might grab him too. “That reminds me, Tim - the name James Wright. Does it mean anything to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gasp of recognition comes, not from Tim (who looks confused and shrugs) but from Martin. Both the ghost and the man look to him for clarity. “Do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin, if it were even possible, looks even paler. “My… friend Basira… mentioned that name. How do you know it? She’s… investigating it. His disappearance. His - he - apparently he vanished near here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone told me about him,” Jon says vaguely, unwilling for reasons he can’t place to actually mention Gerard and the ghost of the folly. He seems like something private, especially now his story is halfway through, and Jon doesn’t want to interrupt that with the sort of debating that comes from being completely at sea in the centre of a plot they just can’t figure. “Someone… I think we should text Georgie and Melanie. They’re in a better position to do research, and we-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have better things to do,” Martin smiles wryly. Chou has taken to sleeping in </span>
  <em>
    <span>his </span>
  </em>
  <span>pockets instead, finding Jon too active for her tastes these days, and as Jon watches him he sees the little kitten poke her head out and bat her ears against Martin’s thumb. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“James Wright, James Wright,” but Tim still looks unhelpfully blank. “I’ll go and ask Daisy, if you want. If you… yeah, I’ll ask Daisy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon slumps beside Martin against one of the now-empty bookshelves, and they both pull out their phones. Martin's text logs to Basira are just records of where the calls happened, interspersed with messages asking if one or the other is free, and the occasional picture of a cat from Basira, a blurry sunrise or a little three-pixel bird from Martin. They're sweet. Jon is in a group chat with Georgie and Melanie, just for the sake of speed, and it's a mess of memes that Melanie finds of themselves on the internet, pictures of cats Georgie sends to torment Jon with, and selfies of one pairing when they find themselves together without the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>James Wright, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon watches Martin type, thumb speeding over the screen, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Think he is connected with this house. Possibly the ghost who is trying to haunt. Paranormal activity increasing since last we spoke.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Very professional, very friendly. Jon just types: </span>
  <em>
    <span>think we found the ghost. james wright. pls google. hope u are ok georgie </span>
  </em>
  <span>and attaches a picture of himself, head against Martin's shoulder, the whole picture slightly blurry because his hands have started to shake over the past few days, the sort of thin and frantic trembling that would take more effort than Jon currently has to sort.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No sooner has Martin sent the message than his phone begins to vibrate in his hand. He looks at Jon, confused and a little wide-eyed, and Jon catches himself thinking (again!) how handsome Martin manages to be, even in a time like this. "It's Basira," he says uncertainly, "But I don't... I don't..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You better answer it," Jon says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin does, but more than that, he instantly hits the button for the speakerphone, and when Jon starts to move away Martin puts his hand on his arm. "Please don't," he says, and then his cheeks colour red, "I - I want you to talk to her, too. You're the one who </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>knows what's going on, after all."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Martin," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says over the end of the line and Jon isn't sure what he had been expecting, but he knows it hadn't been businesslike sensibility. He can hear the sound of a car engine, and the fuzzy sort of quality that means the speaker is using a microphone, not the actual phone. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"James Wright. What do you know?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Um, I'm here with... one of the ghost people, too," Martin shoots Jon a nervous look and Jon squeezes his elbow. His thumb slides over skin, and he leaves his hand there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A comfort, of course.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing more, of course.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"One of the ghost people? I thought you said they'd gone home?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, um, just - just the two of them, because the ghost dropped a - the ghost broke her arm, see, and I - and they needed to, they needed to do some stuff and I - and we sent them home. Sent them. Um. No, they went home," Martin looks at Jon and frowns, "I - James Wright. I'm here with Jon. He can </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>them, Basira, I promise he can, and he says one of the ghosts, one of the - mentioned James Wright. And I remembered the name from the other night, and so I thought I'd - are you in the car?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Yeah," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says. There's a long pause as both Jon and Martin realise she isn't going to expand on that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've been talking to a ghost that was killed in 1985 and he says he was... I'm not sure, I haven't got the full story out of him yet, but he thinks he was killed by James Wright. Tall, and blonde, and - I think he said green eyes?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Blue eyes," </span>
  </em>
  <span>says Basira slowly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"And James Wright vanished in 1973. He hasn't been seen since he went to the Post Office in the village nearest Blackwood House to send a letter to his girlfriend, Jennifer Eames, and then he went to the shop and bought a pint of milk and a packet of ginger nuts and then he went, presumably, back up to the house and nobody ever saw him again. Tall and blonde. And you know this how, exactly?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon closes his eyes for a second. Here comes the bit he always dreads; the </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes i promise im not mad </span>
  </em>
  <span>chat, the please-believe-me, the eventual sigh and the nod and the sort of indulgent tone of voice that comes from pretending to play along with a child's fantasy. "A ghost that was killed by him told me so."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Okay, and where is the ghost?" </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says, all business still as though Jon just told her it was going to rain later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whiplash makes him slow. "Uh-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"In the woods," Martin interrupts hurriedly, giving Jon a worried look, like </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon </span>
  </em>
  <span>is the one here not following the unwritten script. "I don't know much more than that, but the ghost is in the woods. Not in the house."</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Okay," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Basira says and there's the clicking mechanical noise of a car indicator, the sound of an engine growling to a halt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"And are either of you in immediate danger?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No," Martin says, before Jon can say anything to the contrary.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Okay. Thanks, Martin. I hope - stay safe, okay? I'll see you soon."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She hangs up before either of them can say anything more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There is egg on his thumb, difficult to wash off, and Martin holds it under the tap for longer than he probably has to, looking at the bubbles the water creates around his skin. The smell of melted butter fills the kitchen, and the sound of Absolute Classic 80s that Jon turned on when he was trying to fight with the radio to hear the news. Morrissey. The pancake mix is in the deep bowl Martin found in the recesses of one of the cupboards beside the range, all smooth and thin now he’s whisked it out, the ladle in it the only interruption to the surface. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He always thought baking was calming, but he thinks he got that off a clean living show when he was little and his mum plonked him in front of the TV to keep him busy. The woman would smoke and present her mixing bowl to the camera with all the ingredients pre-measured in plastic bowls along the counter, and Martin used to wish she could be his mum, and he could go live on her film set with her and be her bonny little sidekick. Children’s Corner. Something like that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, he didn't, because that would have been stupid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Martin is not big, and Martin is not stupid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon sits by the table, his head pillowed on his folded arms, and with a little burst of something warm and happy Martin realises he’s going to sleep, making little puffy noises every time he breathes out. How much has he slept, really, in the last week?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin would guess not even as much as he has, and he’s seeing stars every time he blinks now. No, Jon is perfectly entitled to a mid-morning doze on the kitchen table, ghost or no ghost - Martin would be a pretty bad host to begrudge him that. And he looks awfully peaceful, his hair down his shoulders and across the table, his eyelashes long and gentle on his cheek, the scars from the shattered glass faded and shiny in the light streaming in from the window. Yes - Jon can sleep all he wants. (Preferably in view of-) (No, that’s creepy, Martin.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Jon snoozes and Martin makes pancakes, all on his own with the radio on, and it almost feels like it could be normal. Martin licks the spoon like he always does when he's on his own, and melts a little butter in the pan on the range, putting his hands on the towel bar to feel the warmth from the body of it. The first pancake is always bad, always a little too buttery and a little too brown, so when he made them he always said it wouldn't count if he ate it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin pours out the first pancake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seeing the ghost had been a shock, and hearing the other ghost had been in a way even worse of a one. It had been horrible watching Jon's eyes glaze over as his </span>
  <em>
    <span>self </span>
  </em>
  <span>took leave of himself and someone else's words spoke through him, especially when he grew too exhausted to really speak and he just slumped over, feverishly hot to the touch, mumbling in a voice not his accent. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Weird. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin always thought he was boring, to have been born so normal, but now he's caught a glimpse of the curse it appears to be to be special he thinks he's quite happy with his lot. Supporting cast. Tree number three in the school play.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first pancake he rolls up and dips into the sugarbowl, the little granules clinging to the wet butter. It tastes of sugar and comfort and a little of plastic from the spatula, but all the same Martin takes his time with it, and pours out another few into the pan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Mmfh," Jon blinks at him, "What are you doing? What's going on?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Pancakes," says Martin, "And </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Police." </span>
  </em>
  <span>He waves the spatula in the air to the beat of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Message in a Bottle </span>
  </em>
  <span>and tries not to feel like too much of an idiot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This seems to be enough for Jon, who beams sleepily. "I like pancakes. Are you making… both of us?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It would be a bit cruel to just make some for me," Martin turns back to the pan, hiding the smile on his face; Jon sounds so much younger and unguarded, fresh out of sleep. The sun is shining, the radio is playing, the sugar is crystallizing on his thumb, and maybe things </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>have the potential to be simply happy for the sake of it - because you need a break, and you need a minute in the summer, and Martin finds that he is (and this is quite rare, for him) content. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon feels stuffed-up and muggy with the lack of sleep, but he knows a nap on the table won’t fix what he needs to do to get back to normal; a proper sleep, in a proper bed, going there in the night and waking in the morning without any supernatural interruptions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It sounds like a pipe dream. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is humming to himself as he bustles about the range, but Jon thinks he doesn’t know he’s doing it - if he did, he would almost certainly stop, and that’s not something Jon thinks he can bear at the moment. He’s just in a t-shirt, dispensing with the regular jumper weather; Blackwood House may be an ice box, and it usually is, but the windowpanes in the kitchen bathe the room in warm summery light and the range aches out heat, and so it must be the only room in the house where you can feel like it might actually be July. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon is quite peaceful, very happy just to sit with his head on his hands and watch Martin about. He isn’t a small man, that’s true, but he’s particular - dainty, perhaps, with the delicate way he pours the batter, and the way he walks, as though his whole self is on tip-toe. Martin walks like his body is porcelain and he’s handling it carefully in case he breaks. He looks perfectly at ease, here, in front of the range, his hair curling from the heat and the butter in the pan, his cheeks all pink and flustered, his glasses steaming up ever so slightly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Jon looks beside him and sees Tim’s face, he scowls. “Shut up and don’t say a word,” he warns the ghost, as though Tim is capable of doing anything but making fun of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim smiles - a little shaky and a little small, but he smiles. His eyes are very far away. “I didn’t say anything.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You looked like you were thinking it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin, at the sound of Jon’s voice, looks over his shoulder and gives him a grin; the days when they all seemed afraid of every house ghost seem far away indeed. “Is that Tim?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is,” Jon says, resolutely ignoring the ghost in question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, Tim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sickening,” Tim says, lying on his back in the air, but he doesn’t sound like he really means it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon wonders what it must be like, to spend every day with a person for a hundred years - no, not even, because Sasha had died in the eighties, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>forty </span>
  </em>
  <span>years then - to be each other's only friend, really, Elias and Daisy not counting too much, to know everything about one another and to still love each other, and then to watch that person die right in front of your eyes just has she had the first time. Screaming. Blood. The gearstick of a car that no longer exists, just like her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon wonders if he'll ever have the courage to ask, and decides not. Some things he just can't do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You do </span>
  <em>
    <span>like </span>
  </em>
  <span>pancakes, don’t you?” Martin turns around, tapping his bottom lip with the spatula, grainy sugar in the corner of his mouth, and Jon is transfixed. “I’m sorry, I sort of forgot to ask you. I figured you do. Not many people don’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like pancakes, Martin,” Jon says a little too softly, and then he wishes the ground would swallow him whole. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin makes a whole plate, the both of them in silence, Tim hovering around the room humming an incredibly annoying tune. There’s a faraway look on his face that Jon doesn’t like, for a reason he can’t place, as though Tim is three seconds away from doing something stupid. He looks like how Melanie did the night before she went to Cambridge without telling anyone - he looks like how Jon thinks he must have when he stormed off into the woods on his own, intent on proving a point to nobody really except himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hope they’re okay,” says Martin, interrupting the silence with the plate of pancakes, a tub of half-used and crumby butter, and a lemon cut into quarters for them to squeeze. The sugarbowl is already on the table, along with a pot of tea just cooled enough to pour. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They will be,” Jon takes one, and his fingers burn, but it is important beyond belief for him to let Martin know that he is - good. Useful. Capable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s ears are red. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And just as Jon is beginning to forget that there is something sinister below them, and that a woman died in front of their eyes hours ago - just as Jon is beginning to think that the world really could be him and a cat licking lemon juice off the table and making a face and a man he might be able to learn to l-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was hunting, you know,” Tim says. He’s sitting on the hot ring of the range, swinging his legs into the ceramic body of it, as though to prove he’s dead already. Nothing can hurt him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon will be ashamed, later, of how annoyed he is to be interrupted. Martin is </span>
  <em>
    <span>right </span>
  </em>
  <span>there looking pretty and open and his eyes are wide and he seems on the cusp of saying something, and Jon is sick of dead people using him as a sort of dictaphone diary with no regard for him. All the same he will feel bad about it. “Oh?” He says brusquely, and then to Martin, much nicer, “It’s only Tim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only Tim,” Tim echoes. He laughs and the noise bounces off the flagstone tiles. “Was it only Tim?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s he saying?” Martin twists his body around, looking where Jon is, his eyes boring right through Tim because he can’t see him because only Jon can because Jon has been fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>cursed </span>
  </em>
  <span>since birth to play therapist to a bunch of dead people. “Jon, what’s he saying?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim looks at Jon like he’s seeing him for the first time. “You’re an only child, Jon. No brothers? No sisters?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Jon says. He’s still too annoyed to feel bad. Chou gives up on the lemons and starts climbing up the sleeve of his jacket to get to his shoulder, purring, rubbing her face against the side of his neck, but he pays her no mind; she’s only a cat. “Tim, I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Danny said he saw someone,” Tim says. His lip is curling up, and Jon is reminded of how his grandmother used to get, not angry - disappointed. “Danny was invited, but I came along because he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>so much better </span>
  </em>
  <span>than me. He said he saw someone in the woods… tall, thin, long hair, these terribly bright green eyes. He said he saw them laughing, but when he shot at the man, I was in the way. They brought me to the house to die. Have you ever been </span>
  <em>
    <span>shot, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tim-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sasha is dead and Elias won’t talk to me and Daisy lives in her own head,” Tim is bouncing off the top of the ceiling now, staying in the room only because he’s forgotten to go through the roof, and the first droplet of guilt is starting to pool in Jon’s stomach and Martin is just staring at him, bewildered, but Tim continues relentlessly. “I’ve been in this hellhole for a </span>
  <em>
    <span>hundred years </span>
  </em>
  <span>and nobody new has been able to see me or talk to me but it was fine - it was fine, because I had Sasha and Daisy was alright back in the beginning, and Sasha was there. Sasha was - and now she’s dead and you can’t even be bothered to care because you’re making faces at </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>guy. Fucking-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who was Danny,” Jon says quietly, “Tim, I - I’m sorry, I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim looks at him with what can only be disgust. “He was my brother. I don’t know </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>he shot me, or </span>
  <em>
    <span>who </span>
  </em>
  <span>he saw, but until he left this place he was - babbling about green eyes and, and, and… I couldn’t say anything to him. Not even Elias knew why he was talking about that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a picture in Jon’s head, he thinks, like a jigsaw puzzle with almost all the edge pieces filled in. “Not even Elias-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off, Jon,” Tim makes a noise that might have started life as a laugh, but is now definitely a scoff. “Fuck off and make googly eyes at Martin, and just - fuck off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On Jon’s shoulder, Chou begins to cry, and Martin is looking at him like Jon might be able to explain, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>how? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Green eyes, and men that all look different, and a list of names with nothing in common, and a history this house seems to have of attracting people who are drawn to the esoteric, and James Wright, and Gerard in the folly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Elias. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the key to the basement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim has left the kitchen, and Martin’s fingertips are on Jon’s wrist, and the food has gone cold. Jon can no longer remember what he had been going to say, before Tim told him half his story. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The car is a little white Peugeot, nothing very exciting, but Martin’s shout echoes all the way through the house, all the way up to where Jon is lying in his bed with his cat trying not to think about anything and especially not about Tim. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin yells, and Chou wakes up and instantly seems to think better of it, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon! Basira is here!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hrngh,” Jon rolls over in the bed, barely awake. “Chou - Chou, come here,” the cat wriggling down through his duvet to the bottom of the bed, “Chou - what did he say-”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m coming-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon fights his way into pyjama bottoms Melanie bought him a few birthdays ago, dark grey with little squirrels all over, a Marks and Sparks classic. His eyes ache and his skin feels tight around his bones the way it always does when he’s spent his energy a little too hard on the ghosts, but it isn’t like he has a choice this time around; it isn’t like he can just head back to the flat and make a cup of tea and sit with his head under the pillow. “I’m coming,” he shouts again, and his voice cracks embarrassingly. Will Martin judge him? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chou he pulls out from where she’s hidden herself, wrapped in the edge of the fitted sheet where it’s starting to peel off the mattress. She complains at him, but goes willingly enough into his pocket when he murmurs to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin has left the front door lying open and the wind is skating a few leaves and twiggy bits into the tiled front hall. Outside, leaning on the bonnet of the Peugeot, there is a small, thin woman dark from the colour of her skin to the plain, black clothes she’s wearing to the hijab wrapped tightly around her hidden hair. She wears fingerless gloves, Jon notices, thumbs tucked into her front pockets, and her eyes are dark and serious and focused on Martin in front of her. There is a badge at her belt, and other official paraphernalia, but the logo isn’t the usual London Metropolitan Jon is used to seeing on the streets. The Peugeot is similarly unmarked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the sound of Jon’s bare feet on the stones, and at the sight of the woman’s eyes focusing over his shoulder, Martin turns around. His whole face is glowing. He looks, Jon thinks, far too handsome to be involved in something like this. Far too happy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Martin says, smiling, “Oh - and Chou. This is Basira. Hussain - Basira Hussain, you know? She’s here, she… well. Basira, this is Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pleased to meet you,” Jon holds out his hand, and she shakes it firmly, “I’ve… heard a lot about you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Likewise,” Basira says, smiling at him like she knows more than he does. “You know, I was the one that sent Martin the link to your YouTube channel. Never thought it would really turn into anything, but there you go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There you go,” Jon echoes. He hopes he doesn’t sound as stupid as he suspects he might. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin just radiates a vague happiness, hands in his pockets, and Jon can hardly look away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They go into the house, Martin and Jon before Basira, leading her around - away from the main door to the side entrance by the kitchen, a much more comfortable way to get settled in. Martin and Basira talk quietly about people they both know, with an underlying tension all too easy to guess at the source of; Basira is not here to pay a friendly visit, and everyone knows it. Jon doesn’t butt in. He just holds his hand up so Chou can lick at his fingertips, at the salt on his knuckles, making pleased little </span>
  <em>
    <span>burr </span>
  </em>
  <span>noises every time he moves her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Big enough place,” Basira says, blinking at the size of the kitchen and the few pancakes still sitting on the range from earlier in the day, “Martin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sit down first. Tea? Coffee?” Martin’s hand is already on the kettle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira shrugs. “Coffee if you have any - only if you’re making.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me and Jon usually take tea around now,” Martin says casually, as though it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>casual and not an admission of far more domesticity than Jon would have thought it was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira’s eyes flicker over to Jon, and he pretends not to see her, and he pretends that Martin’s statement hasn’t made him blush. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You both know why I’m here, I suppose,” she says once coffee has been delivered and Martin has fished the biscuits out of the cupboard, “There’s a whole string of murders, disappearances, unsolved runaways surrounding this house since - well, since the early nineteenth century, as far as I can work it out. James Wright was the one I was investigating at first. And then… I’m sure you know why else I’m here. I - would appreciate it if you could show me some of the sites of the occurences.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you believe us, then,” Martin says. He has both hands wrapped around his mug, leeching every bit of warmth from it. “The… the ghosts, the bodies, the letters. All of it?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira looks momentarily uncomfortable. “Of course I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The library is where Sasha…” Jon looks around, but he can’t see any of them, not Tim, Elias, or Daisy, “Where Sasha was… got. Where she left. Martin saw that one too. I don’t know how much you know about the paranormal, but Blackwood House has had abnormally high amounts of apparitions - and </span>
  <em>
    <span>strong </span>
  </em>
  <span>apparitions - ever since I got here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know more than you might think,” says Basira. She wears a single gold ring on her index finger, Jon notices, and every time she raises her hand to tap at her cheek in a sort of nervous tic, the light shines off it. “I - Martin, I never got to tell you what I </span>
  <em>
    <span>did </span>
  </em>
  <span>in my new branch, did I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin does a nervous sort of giggle. “I’m not going to lie, I sort of thought it was, like, counter-terrorism. Not the Metropolitan - </span>
  <em>
    <span>ghost busters.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Close,” she says, and makes a face that might have started life as a comforting smile, “I - I’ll tell you in a minute. Jon, would you mind showing me to the library?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, sure, if you’re done,” Jon pushes his empty mug to the centre of the table and stands with a little groan as his bones complain at him. Chou clambers from the sleeve of his shirt up to his shoulder and perches there, queen of her own little world. “There isn’t much to see anymore. Just… paper debris. If any of them show up I’ll tell you, if you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d appreciate that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basira,” Martin says quietly, standing to follow them, “What’s going on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shrugs. “I’m not sure I can really answer that. They call it… or </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>call it, anyway… Section 31. Means anything to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good,” she smiles at him, and reaches out to squeeze his elbow, “I’d really like it if you - if it stayed that way. Some things you probably shouldn’t - you’re better off not knowing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And will that help? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon thinks, unashamedly eavesdropping from the door, watching Martin’s face twist in sad disappointment, watching this Basira character shove her hands uncomfortably into her pockets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, he thinks not. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In a way, his is more dramatic, more </span>
  <em>
    <span>real, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but perhaps he only feels that because this is him, dead or alive, still him. He manages not to scream, although his death was just as suprising as hers; not as painful, perhaps, since he kept all his arms and legs together, and most of his blood stayed in his body. It was a remarkably accurate shot, all told, clean through the heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It happens to him where he sulks, in one of the bedrooms on the first floor, the one Melanie and Georgie had been using for the few weeks they stayed here. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sulking </span>
  </em>
  <span>is the wrong word for it, for how injured he feels - Sasha is gone. Surely that means more to Jon than making googly eyes at Martin, than sitting in the kitchen doing nothing while his friends… his </span>
  <em>
    <span>acquaintances </span>
  </em>
  <span>are picked off around him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bastard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim sits all the same in the middle of the bed, hugging his knees to his chest, feeling younger than twenty-seven and </span>
  <em>
    <span>much </span>
  </em>
  <span>younger than the hundred-odd years he’s been in existence, in one form or another. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a sunny day in July, and Tim hadn’t meant to be there at all, but Danny - Daniel Stoker, beloved by all, rich, poor, landed or not - refused to go anywhere fun without him. He was great that way. He wouldn’t hear of Tim being left out, if their friends were collecting anywhere, and especially not when both the Stoker brothers were such tremendous hunters. Of course they weren’t. Tim wasn’t. He didn’t like the hunt, not the actual </span>
  <em>
    <span>body </span>
  </em>
  <span>of it, the snuffing out, the dull thump of dead birds on the bracken, the bullyish boasting, the smell of fire and burning, the walk in the rain, the heavy oily jackets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he liked being with his friends, who were on the whole, good sorts. Tim was a little too young to have been in the action, but David - Danny’s closest friend, several years older than both of them - had seen the end of the Great War, just a few months in France, and had come back with superior airs and a tendency to jump when doors slammed in the house. It was Tim, Danny, David, a few of Danny’s friends from Oxford, and Paul Green, Tim’s friend from the same. At the time Blackwood House had been owned by the Blackwoods, but kept at a distance, and rented out to families for a few months at a time - David’s family, the Mulgrews, had it for the hunting season, so David and his friends could hunt, and so David’s sister Margaret could enjoy the countryside air before wintering in Manchester at her boarding school. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anyway. It had been the hunt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the day had been gloriously sunny, Tim remembers, and will always remember, and the men they had brought to do the heavywork were grunting and sweating up the hill carrying the guns and the cartridges in their leather belts. Danny was singing some stupid song about bootstraps, Tim will </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>remember, and David was laughing, and one of their friends was courting Margaret, with ambitions to propose at the end of their stay in Blackwood House. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What had gone wrong? How had it happened? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man was tall and thin, and his eyes were the sort of green that nothing is. Bright. Gimlets in the dark. Tim had seen him only as he fell, the pain in his chest already fading, the blood spilling through the hole in his waxed jacket, and Danny starting to scream, and the smell of hot. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>How </span>
  </em>
  <span>had it happened? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tim, Tim, oh my God, Timothy,” Danny was there, quick as a flash, and the man was there as well, smiling. He had an old gun in his hands, the vintage kind that Tim thinks might have been used fifty years before then, but certainly not now; an old gun in his hands, and a pendant around his neck, something that winked. He had been shot. Tim, that is, not Danny or the man. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Danny had said something to him, but Tim was already dead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Funny, really. The first few years of his afterlife are fuzzy - he remembers Daisy, and he remembers the reclusive ghost in the basement, who </span>
  <em>
    <span>must </span>
  </em>
  <span>have been Elias because who else could it have been? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But ever since Jon arrived, and Tim started thinking more and more about the happenings in the house, that accepted fact has become something his mind wriggles at, as though it could possibly be false. What other alternative is there?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he can’t help but think that the ghost in the basement introduced himself as something else. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hello, Timothy, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he had said, and he had been… tall, and thin… and his eyes had been green as… as nothing else could be… </span>
  <em>
    <span>My name is - </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Elias? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim lies on the bed Georgie and Melanie slept in. The blood leaks out from the hole in his chest. He can’t breathe. He could never breathe. In his hand, clutched unseen to him, he holds the bullet that shot him - the bullet from Danny’s gun, but he has never held his brother accountable for it, and so there’s never been a need to forgive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dies again. He dies again and again and again, and it hurts just as much this time as it did the last, and he thinks it might never end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha might be on the other side, though. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha might be on the other side. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Tim dies, and the blood stains the bedsheets, and the bullet fades with him, and then there was one. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then there was one. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then - there was one, although she remains unaware of it as yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy floats through the still, dusty air of the library, her eyes skating over the papers that lie strewn on the floorboards. She does </span>
  <em>
    <span>sort </span>
  </em>
  <span>of know what they look like, now, or how they make sounds written down, translated onto paper; over the past few weeks Jon has been opening books and newspapers for Sasha, and Sasha has - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Had - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Been teaching her a little bit, at night when the still-living had gone to sleep. </span>
  <em>
    <span>A is for apple, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she’d said with her eyes dancing laughter, and Daisy has always been a quick learner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What draws her eye to that letter, in particular - no, not even to the letter, but just to the shape of the page, lying hidden beneath one of the fallen bookshelves? The barest corner of it is visible, the yellowed paper, the tip of the first word. Daisy can spell her own name. Nobody ever taught her to do that when she was alive, and certainly not the man with melancholy clinging to his broad shoulders, and certainly not the hand that pushed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The letter is under the bookshelf, and Daisy watches it awhile, interested but not particularly frustrated by her inability to touch it and see what it says. Reading is a difficulty that exhausts her enough she has to retire to the gun room for days at a time, collecting herself into something that can be seen again, but without Sasha - and with Jon otherwise occupied - the house has been boring. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pride is the downfall of many a maker, that’s the problem. What’s the point in hatching a scheme if the people within it don’t eventually realise the brilliance of it? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The paper wriggles free of the bookshelf. Daisy watches. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She watches for half an hour. Maybe more. Daisy has always been a patient woman, in life as well as in death, sitting still with the mud soaking into her trousers, her boots wet, her eyes fixed on supper. A fat bird clucking its way to the cooking pot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The letter does nothing, but Daisy knows what she’s seen, and she isn’t stupid. Someone pushed her out of a window - someone shot Tim - someone killed Sasha - who </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows </span>
  </em>
  <span>what was done to Elias in the basement - and someone’s been trying to kill Martin for months. Daisy isn’t stupid. Someone pulled that letter out for her to read. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A is for apple, and b is for</span>
  <em>
    <span> below Blackwood House, in the basement, in replacement of the storage and forgotten rooms there, as he no longer makes use of the belowstairs for its usual purpose.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy blinks, using bits of her brain rusty from long dormancy, and keeps reading. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I must interrupt to assure you, dearest Barnabas, selfish as I am, that I did not know. I thought it would be for good, or at least, for our betterment. Ours, Barnabas. Yours, mine, Jonah’s, even Albrecht’s. Jonathan and Mordechai. The whole sorry lot of us. I thought we might change the world, we bright men, and usher in a new horizon. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But hubris can be the fatal flaw of more than one foolish man through history. I think I have discovered that plenty for myself. I found out Jonah’s real reasoning accidentally, and I cannot in good conscience continue. He let slip his plan and you - Barnabas, you by name - are at the heart of it. He plans to - </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy squints, but this line is obscured by scratching in a different coloured ink, as though the recipient of the letter did not care to read what had been written. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>- sacrifice. Do not take me lightly when I say that he does not intend to let you leave alive. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Do not be foolhardy. Do not attempt to save him from himself. Just run, my dearest, and I hope the efforts I have made here will absolve me of my sins in front of the God I go to face. Run. If Mordechai should stop you, tell him that I have discovered his hand in all of this, and that I am not afraid. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Know that I am with you in spirit. I hope we will meet again. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ever your friend, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Robert</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy mouths the words of the letter to herself, letting them form meaning in her mind, and after they have settled she spends a long time staring at them. At the shaky hand. At the care with which Robert wrote Bennett’s name, curving around the letters in caress. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She needs to tell Jon. She needs to tell Jon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The watcher does what he does best, and knows that all is going to plan. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Basira and Martin talk in a wave of inside jokes and known abbreviations, one quiet and one radiating happiness, and Jon finds he is perfectly content to watch them interact. Basira is smaller and steadier than Martin, compact and able to compartmentalise, but Jon can see as clear as day on her face how much she enjoys Martin’s company, in just the same way he does hers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds it very easy to sneak away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to, particularly, but halfway through the house tour he remembers Tim’s outburst and he feels a little ridiculous for trailing after them when he has obligations to half a million other things. Gerard, sitting patient in the folly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon finds it very easy to sneak away, when he thinks about all the things he should have done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air outside is cold and clammy, and he finds that he’s missing the coat he’s left up in his room. Chou hates it, sneaking inside the pocket of his trousers and clawing at his thigh with a paw, but there isn’t much he can do. He isn’t even wearing his boots, just slip-on house shoes, and the wet grass soaks his ankles, the edges of his socks, the dew clinging there like it has any business doing so. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The folly is easy to reach. Each time, easier. There is Gerard, or at least, the remains of Gerard, the skull mossed-over and lying discarded, the anonymous ribs, a few tinkly little fingerbones. Joints. All that remains when the rest of you goes someplace else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon inhales, but he knows he can do this - he’s freshly-slept, or at least, better than he was when he last tried to get the whole story.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can do this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he touches the skull it takes no effort at all for Gerard to materialise, the shape of moss suddenly the shape of a man as though it had always been so, as though everything Jon had been seeing was just a funny trick of the light. “Jon,” says Gerard, softly. “I didn’t think you would come back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I did. That’s my job,” Jon says sincerely, and feels a bit stupid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerard gives him a smile, a pretty one, his cheeks see-through. “That’s your job. Of course it is. What… do you want me to do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you finish telling me your story,” Jon hates how manipulative he sounds, like this is all he wants, “Maybe… is that the rest you’re hunting? Do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to pass on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think I do,” Gerard taps his chin with one long, slim finger, his eyes distant, “I think I really do. I… if I told you the rest of it, would you promise me something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jon says, too fast. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Too fast. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Throw me in the lake,” Gerard says. “My - my skull, my bones, my everything. Throw it all in the lake. I don’t want anyone to dig me up and I don’t want to be investigated. I just want to - to be nothing, and be dust, and be left alone. Can you promise me that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” says Jon again. Quieter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerard reaches across the space between them, and with a tremendous amount of effort, Jon finds he is able to place his hand on Gerard’s and rest it there, skin and bones whole and cold keeping him from falling through to the floor of the folly. “Thank you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Jon feels the oddest urge to blush. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where was I?” Gerard asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon tries to pretend that the answer isn’t on the tip of his tongue. “You told me James Wright killed you. That he was holding a knife - that his eyes were green, and you saw him through the woods.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, yes,” Gerard closes his eyes and Jon can see, there on the lids printed as though in ink, two pupils still staring at him. “Yes, I did. He did. I was too shocked to move, you know, and I suppose that was my mistake. One of my mistakes. If he’s a ghost of the house - and Gertrude and I were convinced he was, at that point, so we thought if he was a ghost of the house there was no way he could have got to the woods. I’m sure I don’t have to explain borders.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shakes his head. “But he was here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was him. Gertrude and I had been staring at pictures of him for weeks, months - I knew it was him,” Gerard frowns, “And I said - oh, I can’t remember, exactly. I said something very stupid. You know, I think I just said his name? And he - he looked very surprised. I suppose. And he said… </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh, you mean that one. Yes, that’s my name. One of them, anyway.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“He said that exactly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Exactly that,” Gerard taps the side of his head with his free hand, “I couldn’t forget that if I tried to.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And…” The trees crackle in the wind, and Jon is aware of the wet on his feet. “And what did you do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He stabbed me. It was quick, very quick, and I couldn’t react - I don’t know what I could have done, if I had the time. Right here,” Gerard takes the hand and presses it against his chest, “Right through the heart, like he knew what he was doing. I didn’t have any time. And I swear - I swear, I saw him - I fell down, of course, right here, and I saw him breathing in. Like he was high on it, like he </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>get high on it. And for a second he didn’t look like James Wright at all; he was shorter, smaller, longer hair, older face, but the eyes were still that green. That bright, bright green.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon says nothing. Oh, god. His skin is cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerard is lost in the memories, his eyes misty, his skin wavering like heat on a hot road in July. “He said… </span>
  <em>
    <span>not right, </span>
  </em>
  <span>or maybe it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not ripe. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He looked at me - looked at me, you know, and he looked so disappointed. He said I didn’t fit. He said I wasn’t… oh, I don’t know, he said I wasn’t the right sort, that too many people would notice, and he… shivered, and he looked like James Wright again. He said </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m so sick of this one.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“And - and then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And then he left me,” Gerard laughs a little bit, “And I died. I don’t… I haven’t been tethered very strongly to here. I always wondered why Gertrude didn’t just kill me outright. Destroy the body. She must have come out, and she must have seen me, but - but I don’t know. I’ve been incoherent since then. Since… until you, really, Jon. So thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Jon echoes, his mind a blur as he tries to fit these new pieces of the puzzle onto the board he’s built in his mind. “I - Gerard. Thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smile Gerard gives him is even thinner than before, as bits of him start to dissolve into the air. “I just wanted to tell someone. Tell somebody my name, Jon. Tell them - tell them Gerry Keay died. Can you remember me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jon clings to Gerard’s solid hand, feeling the strength of the lump in his throat, “I - I can do that. I can do that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One more thing, Jon,” Gerard - Gerry - says in no more than a whisper, one half of him already gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes. I - yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry’s strong hand comes to Jon’s chin and holds it there in the air, three fingertips on his jaw, and he comes close, close, closer, and the eye that Jon can still see flutters shut, and there are the breath of lips on him, on his mouth, a kiss from decades ago unreleased. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon exhales. Kisses back, as best as he’s able. His eyes are shut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And when he opens them, there is just the skull, and he is unable to place when exactly Gerry vanished from the folly leaving only his bones behind. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p><p>come chat to me! thank u all for your patience, and remember to kudo/comment! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. How Far Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry guys, this one is a bit shorter than usual. big things coming to make up for it!</p><p>(also that gerry scene last chapter was the reason I write this whole thing in the first place. I think I peaked)</p><p>as usual enjoy x</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: A dark, black screen. The audio is fuzzy, as though a thumb is placed over the microphone, or the recording is on something analogue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You are like me, Jon. Don't you want to see what the world could be?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A whimper. The hot, wet sound of liquid hitting the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hiss. "Don't you want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>see?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jon!” Daisy shouts through the house, but all she can hear is her own voice in her ears, reflected off the walls and back at her. Where is he? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He needs to know. He needs to see the letter in the library. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Something in the basement… </span>
  </em>
  <span>Daisy has not thought about her own death in years, until Jon asked her about it, but now she’s thinking again. About the gun, and the forbidding man, the feeling of such deep and all-consuming loneliness that she thought she might have died and gone to hell long before she fell out of the window. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Was pushed. </span>
  </em>
  <span>And that only forty, fifty years after whatever happened to Barnabas happened to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, Daisy needs to find Jon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finds Martin and Martin’s friend easily enough, sitting in Martin’s room - both on the bed. Martin has Chou in his lap, and she at least sees Daisy, mewling happily at her and stretching a paw out on Martin’s knee. Daisy wishes she could still touch things, if only so she could still pet cats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What does that mean?” Asks the woman who has just arrived, fiddling with the sleeves of her long, loose top. “That cat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, little Chou,” Martin tickles the cat on the head and Chou purrs obediently, spoiled as she is; Daisy wishes she could talk, tell Martin or the woman that Jon is needed. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Where is Jon? </span>
  </em>
  <span>He’s usually not far from wherever Martin is, but Daisy’s been in all the rooms around here, and he’s nowhere to be found. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chou does that when there’s a ghost in the room,” Martin tells his friend, still petting the little kitten on his knee, “Jon says cats are - oh, what’s the word - I can’t remember. Sensitive to that sort of thing, or whatever. I wonder who it is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A ghost,” the woman looks around, dark eyes wide and interested. “And Jon can talk to them at will, or does he need a - ritual or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, they just… talk </span>
  <em>
    <span>at </span>
  </em>
  <span>him, most of the time,” Martin laughs light and low. “Jon’ll be talking to me and then he’ll look off and tell someone to bugger off, but sometimes when we’re chatting I can tell he’s listening to about three other conversations. It tires him out, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy stays and listens. Maybe they’ll mention where he is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that it helps, if he isn’t in the house. For really the first time in years, she regrets the limitations of her body - what does being stuck within the boundaries of the house and the stone yard do when she really needs to leave it? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tires him out,” the woman repeats, looking even more intrigued, “And… how does he react to that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saw it a few times. He… when we were looking for a key, he almost fell over, and then he got attacked by a light fixture, so I guess that doesn’t… count. He fell asleep yesterday almost on top of me. He’s… fainted, a few times, and once I found him - I think he’d been </span>
  <em>
    <span>drained, </span>
  </em>
  <span>or something - out in the woods, near this little temple thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Interesting," says the friend, "Very interesting."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy gives up. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Near this little temple thing… </span>
  </em>
  <span>if Jon is in the woods, she can only hope that he hears her. And where is Tim? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon!” She shouts again, and then, “Tim! Jon? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tim! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Where are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time since she’s read the letter, she feels the creeping fingers of dread up her spine. The place where her spine might be if she was still alive. “Tim? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tim?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>No reply. And yet - and yet Sasha hasn’t been that long ago, and Tim has always been fiery, quick to react and slow to cool to a simmer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy has never enjoyed being out in the big house, being at the forefront of the action. She left that to Tim and Sasha, their place in the dust motes and the sun of the library, playing in the warm yellow air - for her part, she’s always been more comfortable in the gun room, tucked beside the long-disused weapons and the smell of slick oil and the sound of things shot centuries ago, and the feel of cool air through her body. “Jon,” she calls, a little quieter now, drifting through the floor towards the one room in the house she knows she’s safe in. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Tim!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And in the gun room, the door to the basement is open. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door to the basement is open, and Elias is standing in it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh - Elias,” Daisy says, having reached the room wholly. “You haven’t seen - you haven’t seen Jon, have you? Or Tim?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t say I have,” Elias looks odd. His eyes are glimmering in the sun streaming in from the big window, that shade of emerald-stone green that used to disconcert Daisy so terribly, when she first met him. They didn't look like the eyes he should have been born with, but then, who was Daisy to judge? “Why do you want them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tim I don’t really,” she drifts over to the lines of wood-shiny guns against the wall, still on edge. “I - I read one of those letters in the library. I need to tell him about it, I need to… show him it. It’s… I think it changes a lot. Elias, are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>you can’t see anything in the basement?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oddly enough, Elias just smiles a little wider. “And what would I see down there, if I could?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something, I’m not sure,” Daisy can still feel it, that unease, that sense that something is very, very wrong. “I - Elias, are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>you haven’t seen Jo- and how did that door open? Was he down here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias says nothing. He just places his hand on - and on, not through - the doorhandle, and grips it, and with his other hand he reaches for something behind him in the darkness. “Do you remember what it looked like, Alice?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy reels back. “I - I - </span>
  <em>
    <span>what </span>
  </em>
  <span>did you call me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From the depths of the blackness in the basement, Elias - </span>
  <em>
    <span>holding, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and gripping, and touching - pulls out the gun that Daisy kept under her bed for months before using, the thing she coveted from a distance for years, the thing that got her killed, in the end. It looks friendly, despite what it’s done. Squat. Shiny. With Elias, as though it belongs there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Elias,” Daisy says, and now the fingers of dread have turned into a fist of dread clutching her all over. “Elias, what are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He says nothing. He lifts the gun to his shoulder, as comfortable as anything. He aims. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy finds she can do nothing but stare, and think - </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Nobody I could see was in the room with me, but that doesn’t mean it was nobody at all. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels remarkably like being pushed, and the seconds before hitting the ground. Remarkably.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon comes back several hours after their almost-complete house tour. Martin had sat down in his bedroom before getting to any of the others, distracted by the cat sitting on him, and before she knew it Basira was sitting down as well, cross-legged on the comfortable red quilt, and they were catching up as though everything was normal - just like they always used to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she isn't lying when she says she missed him. She did - she had - most desperately missed him, as much as she allows herself to. On long nights, and on longer days, she would be in the car with her partner (an old man far beyond the standard police retirement age called </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker, </span>
  </em>
  <span>who refuses to talk to her beyond grunts but has saved her life three times already) and she would long for the days when she could ring Martin and they would eat spring rolls and talk - talk - talk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But everyone moves on. Basira to this investigation, Dekker to a solo mission, and Martin to -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon," says Martin softly, when the man himself enters the house again. He smells of soil and he looks exhausted, and he doesn't protest when Martin hurries down the stairs to grip him by the elbow so he doesn't trip. "Are you okay?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks up at Martin (and it is up, Basira notices, because the man is hardly taller than she is) and he smiles. It's wan, but it's a smile. "I - yes, I believe I will be. I have... something to tell you... </span>
  <em>
    <span>both </span>
  </em>
  <span>of you," catching sight of Basira, which she thinks is impressive for him considering how much he watched Martin. "Both - I -"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tea," Martin says and wraps his arm around Jon's shoulder and pulls him towards the kitchen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira can only follow, feeling slightly amused. It's nice to see Martin fuss over someone that isn't her, and to see that fuss so obviously reciprocated. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the kitchen Martin dumps the cat on Jon's head and slides the battered kettle onto one of the rings of the range; Jon smiles at him again, and Basira takes a seat before they can do anything drastic, like start making twinkly-eyes at each other while she's still in the room. "You said you had something to say, Mr. Sims?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon startles at his name in the formal, and looks like a guilty child. "Please, call me Jon. I... yes, I do. Martin, do you remember the ghost at the folly?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I remember the </span>
  <em>
    <span>skull </span>
  </em>
  <span>at the folly, I remember the </span>
  <em>
    <span>body </span>
  </em>
  <span>at the folly," Martin says like it's normal, and then looks at Basira, cheeks pink. "Um. We didn't kill anyone."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I won't tell if you don't," she says automatically. Almost the motto of the division at this point. "Go on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin pours boiling water into three mugs. Jon pets the cat. "Uh... James Wright. Who... is he, if you don't mind me asking?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"James Wright," Basira hardly has to think before she summons the details of the case to her mind, so many long nights and short mornings and car journeys with Dekker making sure she knows the list of names better than her own family tree. "He went missing in 1973. He was interested in the occult, the esoteric, we know that much, and possibly even worked in the business, although the seventies weren't as... you know. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Open </span>
  </em>
  <span>to that sort of thing. He was down near Blackwood House, possibly even in the house itself, investigating reports of a haunting by Florence Blackwood, who had recently inherited it after it had been sold back into the family. He went missing in '73, as we know, and was never seen again. But I... </span>
  <em>
    <span>my department </span>
  </em>
  <span>in London believe he's connected to a string of other missing persons cases."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"James Wright," Jon says slowly. "Would you believe me if I said I had just... um. Been with-" and for some reason he blushes, and looks at Martin, and looks back down into his mug, "Been with a ghost who said he had been killed by James Wright, in 1985?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that gets Basira's attention. "Go on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Weird," Jon turns in his chair, "Usually they - I mean, Tim, I suppose - they all come running when I talk about - oh, never mind. Isn't important. The ghost I'm talking about is Gerard... Gerry Keay. Is he-?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Never heard the name," Basira frowns, "I'll text... I'll ask them to look him up. Thank you. What did he say?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Said James Wright stabbed him, but he was definitely a - he was see-through, you know, and obviously not corporeal. Stabbed him, and - and his eyes were very green, and he said that Gera-</span>
  <em>
    <span>Gerry </span>
  </em>
  <span>wasn't the right sort for him. I can't remember the specifics. He said he wasn't... wasn't the right fit. But I know ghosts well," Jon looks up at her, his face serious, and earnest, "I know ghosts well and they shouldn't be able to hold - well, anything, really. But not knives. Not... they shouldn't be able to kill."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you think this Wright guy is our spirit?" Martin puts his hand on Jon's wrist, just the barest tips of his fingers, and neither of them seem to notice.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(Interesting, </span>
  </em>
  <span>says the bit of Basira's brain that still cares about things like that.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can't see how he isn't," Jon looks troubled. "But I haven't seen anyone that looks like him around the house. I don't..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm investigating the cases for specifically paranormal reasons," Basira says, when she realises Jon has trailed off to say nothing more. "I... my department, my new department in the Met, is quite... up to date on paranormal theory, and we have reason to believe this house, Blackwood House, is the centre of something quite a lot bigger."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks at her sharply. "So you - when you recommended-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"When I recommended these people I didn't think it was as... I didn't think it was quite so bad as it is," Basira admits, and she hates the hurt she can see in Martin's eyes, "I knew it was... bad, Martin, I know, but I didn't think it would escalate. And then... my department gave me a bit of time to come down here myself. I'm. I'm sorry."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, at least we proved there's something here," Jon says with a wry smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is still touching his wrist. Basira wonders if either of them have noticed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tea's nice," she says, after a second. "Thanks, Martin."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"These other cases," he says suddenly, "Basira... how far back does it go?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"First recorded missing-persons of paranormal suspect is 1818," she says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She isn't expecting Jon to start choking on his tea, but when he does Martin gasps and looks as though she's just told him his cat has died. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"When?"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"1818," Basira repeats slowly, "Do you... know about it?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, I-" Martin frowns. "Can you repeat the list of - of people? Of cases? Who all do you think went missing because of this house?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira stands and begins to pace around the room, restless with the odd energy that's filled her. "There's the two in 1818, Barnabas Bennett and Jonah Magnus, reported by their mutual friend Robert Smirke - he's the one that said there was something beyond the ordinary going on, but when my department tried to find him - and this is two hundred years ago, mind - he had built a house on Dartmoor and gone completely doo-lally. Babbling about the mist and fog and eyes watching him wherever he went."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Barnabas and Jonah," Martin says faintly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon says nothing. He's still coughing just a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Then there's William Elliott, in 1856, another gentleman from London with an interest in ghouls who had heard about the disappearances. He vanished. Then John Lloyd, in 1889, a merchant from Cardiff who wrote ghost stories for his three sons and wanted to bring them down here for an excursion - never seen again, and the sons reported him and were beside themselves and so on and so on. Richard Mendelson, by all accounts a charlatan from the continent who made his money on false exorcisms, 1924. James Wright we know of, 1973, and then another self-proclaimed paranormal investigator in 1997. Elias Bouchard."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh my god," says Jon. His face has drained completely of colour. He looks, in fact, like he might be sick. "Oh my god."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey, babe,” says Melanie softly, kissing the top of Georgie’s head as she comes back to the kitchen table, ferrying two mugs of tea with her. “How goes it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie sighs and leans back against the back of the chair as Melanie sets the mugs down and puts her hands on Georgie’s shoulders. Her thumbs dig into the tense, stressed muscles there, rubbing little circles in the skin, and Georgie melts into the touch. “It goes okay. I wish… I know why he doesn’t, but I wish he’d be </span>
  <em>
    <span>on </span>
  </em>
  <span>more.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Melanie kisses her again, her skin soft against the shorn bristles on Georgie’s scalp. “I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon has been absent almost completely since they left him at Blackwood House, looking thin and drawn on the gravel drive. He texts once or twice a day, terse updates mostly, sometimes selfies, sometimes pictures of Martin at the range or Martin half-asleep on the table or Martin with the cat in his arms, but he’s never been any good at sorting out useful information from the fluff. Melanie and Georgie are stuck learning about things several days after it happens. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the letters Jon photographs and sends to them immediately. And something is biting at the edge of Georgie’s brain, and has been ever since she read the first half of the letter Jon and Martin discovered in the library - something she was told, perhaps, something she read. She knows something. “I just want to - help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can do more here than there,” Melanie pointedly doesn’t look at Georgie’s arm as she slides into her seat opposite, in front of the many notebooks and heavy fairy-tale anthologies they’ve been hunting through today. “Jon needs someone with distance. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We </span>
  </em>
  <span>need someone with distance. Doing research in Blackwood House would be like… trying to see the wood for the trees. Yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Georgie smiles at her. “I - yeah. I love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you too. What do you want me to be hunting for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie wraps her free hand around her mug of tea, thinking. “I don’t… anything about two worlds, multiple worlds, things like that. Sacrifices, maybe, or… or vast amounts of energy. If we can work out what, or why this thing in the house wants to kill people, we can work out how to stop it - assuming it’s something that still has a mind. You know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I get you,” Melanie starts chewing on her pen, flipping pages at a time through one of the thinner books on the table, “And you think… what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a ritual I read about. Christ, </span>
  <em>
    <span>years </span>
  </em>
  <span>ago, before I met you, in uni - me and Jon were going through a real pagan phase. He spent a month believing he might be able to talk to Cernunnos and doing tarot, and I spent a long time doing - hah - spells and shit. Rituals. Can you curse the stars above, that sort of thing. But the rituals I read about, or some of them anyway, they were… there’s this one. There’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>one. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I think it was… look for references to watching, or Dartmoor, or fog. There was something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe you,” Melanie is still feverishly paging through books. “Any particular time period?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pre-1800s, around the turn of the century there,” Georgie hugs the tea tighter to herself, “The fog ritual is… old, from what I remember. Really old. The watching one I only heard about. I… university witches aren’t the most reliable for the esoteric.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie snorts. “You don’t say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie connects her phone to the radio, sets it to a station instead of her own music - one of the countless internet stations playing the sort of calm, New-Age Enya soundtracks she liked to listen to when she studied back in university. Her and Jon, books splayed over the table. She used to wear a chunk of rose-quartz around her neck on a cheap cloth band, and whether it worked or not was one thing, but it was the fact that without it she felt naked; </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither of them speak to one another. Every few minutes Melanie reaches across the table and squeezes Georgie’s wrist, just a little touch to remind her she’s there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At lunch, they stop, and Melanie leaves the flat to go get a sachet of sauce to go with the stir-fry Georgie's cooking. Georgie has always been the chef of the place. Jon can cook, but has no desire to, citing a childhood of bland English-grandparent meals to convince him never to prepare food again, and Melanie could probably find it in herself to burn water. Jon cooks once or twice a week for the three of them out of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jamie Oliver </span>
  </em>
  <span>books, or out of the Delia Smith that his grandmother left him when she died (Georgie thinks; Jon never talks about her, but inside the book spidery, inky handwriting says </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maude Sims </span>
  </em>
  <span>and that's really all the evidence she needs.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Georgie cooks. Since they've come back from Devon she's needed Melanie to cut most of the stuff, and be her hands for - most things, really, but Georgie can still hold the spatula and do lots of poking and prodding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Melanie gets squabbly when she's kept inside for too long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the radio, they're playing a competition to win a fifty-pound voucher for a shop that sells magical memorabilia. Rocks and stones and things. Georgie used to want to learn to do rune-bones, but the thought of having to use something that was once walking and talking and wrapped in flesh and blood put her completely off the idea. And she's never been good at languages. She never managed to read the runes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Honey, I'm home," Melanie yells through the flat, and Georgie can hear her clomping to take her huge boots off, her keys rattling in her hand. "Got stopped by a girl in the Tescos. Said she likes the videos, asked me how Jon was."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The video wasn't a bad idea," Georgie turns her head to accept the kiss Melanie has to stand on tip-toe to give. "At least then nobody's asking if he's died or anything. If we... if him and Martin..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Touch wood," Melanie says dryly, placing one hand on the top of her head. "Do you think they will?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think Jon likes him, for what it's worth," Georgie takes the packet of sauce out of Melanie's pocket and squeezes it onto the sizzling vegetables in the pan, "And I think Martin likes </span>
  <em>
    <span>him, </span>
  </em>
  <span>for the same. But whether either of hem have the intelligence to do anything about it is another question, isn't it?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melanie sighs heavily. </span>
  <em>
    <span>"But..."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"But nothing. If it happens it does. I'll be happy for them both."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're no fun for a gossip, George," Melanie takes the empty packet to the bin and when she's back she kisses Georgie again, deeper and for longer, not for any other reason besides that she can. Georgie loves her - she does, deeply, more than she's loved anyone else - and she drops the spatula beside the pan so she can tuck her arm around Melanie's waist and hold her almost as tightly as she wishes she could. "I love you," Melanie says into her mouth, "I love you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I love you," Georgie whispers back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she and Melanie had got together, Georgie had been constantly on edge, waiting for the love to drift away and the complacency to settle in. It had happened in every other relationship she wandered into, and she would have been a fool to expect anything different from this one, but years into it and she still catches herself looking at Melanie as though she can't believe her eyes. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>can't </span>
  </em>
  <span>believe her eyes, or her luck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And when she looks at Melanie, she finds without fail that Melanie is looking back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They seperate their stir-fry and sit, Georgie fighting a little with the juggling act of bowl and fork and broken arm. "Are you worried?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"About Jon?" Melanie dabs the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. "Are you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not sure yet."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Me neither."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you think we should be, though?" Georgie's cast itches, but it's too far in for her to scratch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think so," Melanie says, and stretches her hand out to rub against Georgie's knee, "But I... I think it wouldn't be... I don't want to be worried yet. I don't want to worry before I have to."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so resumes the Enya, and the endless Wikipedia cycles, and Melanie getting up every twenty minutes or so to refill the cups of tea, and Georgie's arm tickling her and her eyes burning because when she stares at her laptop she forgets to blink. Georgie falls down a rabbit-hole of witch blogs on Tumblr, pictures of dried lavender, leatherbound notebooks, fountain pens uncapped sitting in the middle fold of spellbooks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Georgie," Melanie says suddenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun has almost set, and the light in the room means that Melanie's hair is illuminated a beautiful red from the dying skyline, her face in stark white from her laptop. Her eyes are wide, flying across the screen, and her lip is stuck between her teeth. "I think I - oh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I think I found something."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah? Tell me - talk me through it, then."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay, okay, okay - okay, yeah. This is a... diary, I think, of some dude from... from sometime in the eighteen-hundreds, I found it on - you know that university archive, the UCL one, in some paper about the occult and mental illness... okay," Melanie stops reading so quickly, but she looks worried, and that worries Georgie in turn. "So the guy that wrote this is called </span>
  <em>
    <span>Albrecht von Closen... </span>
  </em>
  <span>okay, and the diary is from... right. Eighteen-ten. Okay."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie pulls her notebook towards her and begins scribbling in the shorthand she created for lectures. "Go on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He says... let me read, hold on-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>November 7th, 1810.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To-day was interesting. I finally learned the secret of the books I have collected over the years from Germany, from Scotland, and from the wider continent. I intend to keep this secret close to me, as I think Magnus and Lukas would kill each other and myself to find it, if they knew it was in my possession.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I read the books from the tomb. The language was archaic, the script even moreso, but I read them, and I learned of the ritual I suspect Johann either created or was attempting to undergo at the time of his death. It is called the Watcher's Crown.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I will write it here in plain English for my own mind, rather than for any other reason. Johann dictates that the ritual calls for either the essence of one mortal being, or the essence of four spirits.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(Although I am hard-pressed to believe this, recent events regarding Lukas (and Magnus) force me to suspend my disbelief.)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One, then, or four. Once these ingredients have been assembled, the ritual must take place in a building created for the purpose. Symmetrical sections, in order to split these souls - or this soul. An eye must be drawn in the centre of these sections, and the person who wishes to wear the crown of the watcher will stand in the centre of the pupil.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The instructions are unclear here. There is a chant, perhaps, or a prayer one must perform. The watcher, or the eye, and again I am unclear - will bestow upon the performer their crown. They will be able to see everything. They will be able to know everything.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As far as I know, there are no survivors. This has been greatly troubling to me, and I cannot figure who to tell about this. Perhaps no-one.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps that is for the best.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Perhaps that is for the best," Melanie finishes, and looks up at Georgie with a new sort of horror in her eyes. "Oh my god. Georgie - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Georgie, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon is -"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think we start to worry now," Georgie says, with a calm she doesn't feel. "I... I </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>think we start to worry now." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blackwood House is a mess. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon had tried to take himself away to have a small, controlled panic in his room without Basira or Martin seeing him, but there had been blood on his sheets and Chou had started squealing and Tim still wasn’t answering when he shouted - it really wasn’t hard to add two and two and get four, then. Two and two makes four, and one and one makes window… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is okay,” he says, holding onto Chou as though she’s some sort of harbour from the storm. “This is okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No it </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn't,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin bites out furiously. They’re in Jon’s room, arranged around the bloodstained sheets in sombre formation, Basira in the doorway, Jon perched on the edge of the bed, Martin pacing beside the window, “Jon - if you’re right-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Elias Bouchard is dead,” Basira interjects. “Of course he’s right. We both are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon ignores both of them. “This is okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If Elias knows we know about this then </span>
  <em>
    <span>no it isn’t. </span>
  </em>
  <span>We know he can… push bookshelves, knock down lights, kill at least four people, and probably more. Probably way more. He’s been pushing stuff off the roof, he’s been leaving the grounds of the house, he’s been… manifesting. This is not okay, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We need to leave, then,” Jon says. “We can’t find the basement key - we can’t - Martin, we need to leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unseen to either of them, Basira makes an interested little noise to herself and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>snick.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Running away? You want to run away,” Martin looks at Jon with something very close to disgust. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon flings his hands in the air. Miserably, Chou leaps off his shoulder and goes to curl up beside the patch of Tim’s dried blood, looking unhappy. “Of course I want to run away! I want to - nothing is worth you dying, Martin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Us dying.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-And I just - what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Us dying,” Martin repeats. He looks angry in a way Jon has never seen him, not even in their tiff just after Georgie’s accident. “Jon, you’re in danger here, too, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>got attacked-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is not the point!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m sorry, am I meant to just </span>
  <em>
    <span>ignore </span>
  </em>
  <span>that, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not the point,” Jon repeats. He wants to pace. He wants to rage. But he’s done too much over the past two weeks, and he feels faintly fragile, aware of all his bones, “That is so not the point, oh my </span>
  <em>
    <span>god, </span>
  </em>
  <span>the point is if we stay here we won’t be alive and I don’t want that. I don’t want… this is something bigger than I’ve seen before, and we still don’t have all the facts, and I don’t want it to be my fault that you don’t come out of this alive. I don’t want that to be on me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do you think </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll </span>
  </em>
  <span>feel, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You won’t have to because we’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>leaving!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is my house,” Martin says, voice tight, “This is my mess. This is my… thing. Before this house I was doing a course in the Open University at night and I was fucking - I was working in Waterstones watching people with better lives than me read fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>Foucault’s Pendulum </span>
  </em>
  <span>and talk about their courses and their jobs and their relationships. I couldn’t afford a house. I couldn’t - I couldn’t even afford to rent in London, not properly, not half-properly, and I’m still paying off the bills for my mum’s care, and I - I - this is my house. And I want to do it </span>
  <em>
    <span>properly.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why is it so difficult to understand that I don’t want you to be dead?” Jon realises his voice is shaking, shaking far more than it should be. “I mean - what am I missing? Is this a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>do you want to do this-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course I don't, but I don't like running away, not when I've done it my whole life-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm not saying you should run away-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"We!" </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin all but screams it, and he certainly yells it, his round face red and apoplectic. "I don't care if you never want to see me again after this, but this is - we are - I'm not </span>
  <em>
    <span>- we-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"But I can speak to them-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't give a fuck, Jon!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon blinks, startled into silence by that at least. Martin doesn't like swearing. Not when it matters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't give a fuck," he says, quieter now and measured, but no less angry, "I couldn't give a flying fuck if you could perform </span>
  <em>
    <span>Swan Lake </span>
  </em>
  <span>for them, I'm not... leaving to be safe and letting you stay in a house full of something that could kill you and I'm not letting you talk me into running away from my problems. Where would we go? What would we do?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"London," Jon says. He can hear how weak his voice sounds. How weak his argument is. "We go... to my place."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right, and how long is that meant to last?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"As long as-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>no," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Martin folds his arms in front of his chest, "So where do I sleep? On the sofa? In with Georgie and Melanie? Where do I work, where do I stay, what do I do? How do I make any money?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I can work something-"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"No you can't. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I'm - this is my thing. I'm staying until the end. You can fuck off back to London and leave me alone and forget any of this ever happened, but I can't and I don't want to."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon tries to think about what he had been getting at, what he had been trying to make Martin understand, but the details of the idea escape him. "I just... I want you to be safe, Martin, and I don't think - no, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>we can't be safe here. That's not a bad thing. I want you to be safe."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin's face does something complicated and confusing. "I want... I want you to be safe too. I don't -"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So lets go. Both of us. Let's leave."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks at him for a long moment full of silence and everything between them. "Jon - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon. </span>
  </em>
  <span>This is my house. This is my... these are my ghosts. This is my problem, this is my life. I can't run away from it forever. When do I stop running? When do you get fed up with me, and when do I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I would never," Jon hisses. "Stop - putting - words - in - my - mouth."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay, so when do we stop?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And again Jon tries to think about what he wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And his mind delivers him an image of Martin in the mornings, carrying two mugs of tea over to the table, smiling, his cheeks ruddy from the heat of the range, his hair curling a little at the front from the steam rising off the kettle. Of Martin with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, in those stripy blue-and-white pyjamas Jon has seen hanging off the end of his bed, Marks and Sparks classics. Of Martin's broad shoulders, the round of his stomach, his thighs in the blue-bleached jeans, his favourites. His blonde hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"When," Martin repeats impatiently, as though he hasn't seen what Jon has.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I - I - Martin, I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't want to run away," Martin says. "No matter what happens. I'm sick of ignoring things. Running away from things."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Martin, I c-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Were you talking about this, I wonder?" Basira stands in the doorway, and Jon bites off the end of his sentence, burning red. She's smiling like she </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows, </span>
  </em>
  <span>somehow, and from the end of her extended finger dangles a grey-iron key from a rusty ring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, god," Martin says, and gives Jon an odd look. "What - what were you going to say?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It doesn't matter," Jon manages. "It doesn't matter at all." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Martin’s hands are shaking, holding the basement key. Basira had given it to him. “After all,” she had said, her eyes glittering with - </span>
  <em>
    <span>humour, </span>
  </em>
  <span>at a time like this? - “After all, you did just shout that it was your house for the whole world to hear.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin doesn’t even have the space left to be embarrassed. He’s just tired. He just wants this to be over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he wants, more than anything, to have said yes to Jon. To take the hand Jon had clenched at his side, and smooth out the fingers and slot them between his own, and say </span>
  <em>
    <span>where were you thinking of </span>
  </em>
  <span>and follow him wherever he led. He wants to package up his fate and tie a ribbon around it and hand it to someone else. He doesn’t want to do this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s doing it anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No matter what we find down here, we - we can deal with it,” he says. They’re in the gun room, looking at the closed door to the basement, the space behind it pulling all attention as though it’s magnetised. The grey. It feels like it’s darkened over the weeks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can deal with it,” Jon says, looking shaken but resolved, “You’re - you’re right, Martin, you’re absolutely - we can.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira shrugs. “I know.” If she’s worried, or afraid, she doesn’t show it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks at her, and he isn’t sure what he sees on her face beyond care - friendship, care, and surety that no matter what happens, she’ll be able to get them out of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he looks at Jon and he sees trust, plain and simple, bare between his cheeks and on his nose and down his chin and in his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And a cat peeping out under his collar. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He inhales, and exhales, and slots the key into the lock.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>hope you enjoyed!! see you next week x</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Topsoil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi guys, sorry for the delay in posting this one, but its a long one to make up for it. 10k words of sweet sweet Answers. hope you enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>[Video ID: A black, static screen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound of ragged breathing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Video ID ends.]</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The grass is wet with morning dew where he walks, and even in his thickest pair of socks and trousers Barnabas can feel the damp seeping into his clothes, the green tickling the bare skin of his ankles through the fabric. The water collects on the toes of his shoes, running down the leather, and he stares at it, and thinks -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What? What does he think? His mind has been unsettled, unable to think about anything at all since Robert's note. Or was it since that awful stay with Mordechai? Or was it before that, when Jonah first kissed him in the woods, with blood on his lip and fire in his eyes, and beckoned him and then - and Barnabas has always been too willing, said all his schoolmasters, to follow in the wake of leaders.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Poor Barnabas, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thinks ruefully, as the open front door of the house comes into view, </span>
  <em>
    <span>The single sheep in a group of thirsty shepherds.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The door is open, yes, but he expected that. Jonah takes merry delight in predicting him, at waiting for him in places Barnabas thinks he has been secretive about, and then he stands a head shorter and so much larger in soul, hands held behind his back like a child that knows he has been naughty - and a child that knows he is about to get away with it. At house meetings in London, the group of them in Albrecht's -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, not Albrecht anymore, he's </span>
  <em>
    <span>gone -</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In Robert's, or Giovanni's, or even the little home Barnabas keeps for the season, all with their sweet, thick brandy, their whispers, their covetous looks. Barnabas knows he and Jonah are not the only pair to have coupled off, if coupling could be what it is; Robert does not need to write it in ink for Barnabas to know how he feels, and Jonah, he is sure, has slept with all of them more than once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he likes to think the rest is reserved for him. The lazy afterwards. The shirts that Jonah wears unbuttoned, his lips parted and pale, as he stands by the window with his eyes closed letting the world wash over him. He likes to be seen and he likes to show, Jonah, despite the horror, and Barnabas is sure more than one late-night scurrier has seen the full display - Jonah laughs, he can hear it now, a cackle with teeth in it, and he turns around to Barnabas still in the bed and his long fingers are pressed to his own throat, and there is blood perhaps, on his neck where he has been bitten. The sheets are stained. The room smells of them both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jonah is not inside the door, when Barnabas comes through.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn't been expecting him there.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You are in danger...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course he is in danger. He knew that as soon as he met Jonah, this slight of a man, shadows beneath his eyes and under his fingernails, his hair long and combed, his eyes the brittle green of crushed gemstones. The way he danced with Harriet that night, and the way he had met eye with Barnabas, his mouth on the rim of his glass, his tongue slippering out to catch a droplet on the outside of his palm, like a cat too dignified to admit having been disturbed. Jonah, and the way his body moves when he rides, the grey horse Mordechai mocks him for being too dramatic to own, the way he falls into the rise and dip of it. The way his heels turn out. The way his toes point, when he wriggles out of his shoes in impolite company and stretches, leaning across the laps and shoulders of important men, brushing against shoulders and necks and calves with no attention to propriety.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course he is in danger. But Barnabas cannot bring himself to care.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"He wants you for himself," Mordechai whispers, and Barnabas is crowded into the fog, both with and without body, and he cannot feel. He cannot think. Mordechai is the only source of heat in the world, five points against his jaw, his thumb on the point of his chin. "But I want you, Bennett. I want you for mine."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"I - I-" Barnabas cannot think through the fog. All he can remember is the laugh, and the wicked teeth, and the cooling bedsheets. "Mordechai..."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Mordechai leans forward but there is no compassion in the kiss, only a rough possessiveness, a need to have and own and keep and steal. "You're the only one, Bennett. The only one of us not touched, yet. Who will it be? Who will win? You can't let him win. You can't let him have you."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Mordechai-"</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The fog is everywhere. Barnabas cannot think of anything else.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Even now, he does not fully understand how he escaped Moorland House with nothing more than a few bad dreams to keep him tossing and turning. He thinks he can remember Jonah, and he knows he can remember the feeling of Mordechai's anger like a physical blow to him, but beyond that -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside Blackwood House everything is cold and light with sunshine. Barnabas treads carefully. He makes no sound, but he knows Jonah knows he is here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jonah knows everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I want to eat it all, sometimes," he had said one night, sweat cooling on his stomach, Barnabas reclining in the afterglow, Jonah ignoring him completely, "I want to fold it up and eat it and have it forever."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Everything," </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jonah said, and his eyes were sharp, and had they been diamonds Barnabas would have been bleeding on the floor, and he knows Jonah would have spared no mind but for the expense of the ruined sheets. "I want to know everything. I want to have everything."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is so much space in his small body for so much greed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so little in Barnabas for anything other than love. He knows where Jonah will be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robert told him not to come here, after all, and so Barnabas heads for the basement.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With the key in the lock, Jon turns around to Basira. “Where did you find this in the first place?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shrugs. “It was in the top drawer of the bedroom Martin showed me to. The other one, the one at the down end of the corridor. Should it not have been there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve been looking for it all month, is all,” Jon says. Hand on the key, still cold despite all the time it’s spent held tight in his clenched fist. “I… it wasn’t anywhere it should have been.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shivers. “So - so - so what do we do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” Jon stares at the heavy door and tries to think, “This must be what it - what </span>
  <em>
    <span>Elias - </span>
  </em>
  <span>wants us to do. He’s hidden… he’s had it hidden away this whole time. We looked in that drawer. This means he wants us to come down. He’s ready for us now. Don’t you think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looks troubled. Basira’s face gives nothing away. “I don’t know,” she says at last. “You pair are the ones who’ve been living here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We realised we needed to get into the basement almost immediately after... or was it before the library?" Martin turns to Jon in question, and all three of them flicker gazes down to the scars up Jon's arms and down his neck, the pale pink incisions across one cheek, up inside his shirt. "I can't remember. I suppose it doesn't matter. We explored... before we knew who was doing it all, we explored the whole house. Top to bottom. We were looking for something, and Jon said-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I said I'd know it when I saw it," Jon says, subdued. Because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>seen. And he had remained none the wiser.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira looks unsympathetic. Out of her pocket, in a tic she must not realise she’s doing, she pulls a lighter and begins to flick the flame off and on. "So - basement key?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Before anyone came to the house I tried to go down there," Martin says, the feeling so far away now - back when he thought he might be going mad, or at the very least losing a little bit of his mind, "I made it halfway down the stairs before it was like... it was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>feeling, </span>
  </em>
  <span>it was like... it frightened me. Bad. Eyes, and like a hand pushing me - pulling me, on my shirt."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Like Daisy said."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, like Daisy said," Martin winces at the name, and Jon finds himself thinking - how odd, how much they managed to share, even when half of them in the house could only talk to the other half through him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And then what?" Basira asks, arms folded, interest squarely piqued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The key went missing," Jon says, connecting with Martin, the door still unopened. That had been near the beginning, when he still couldn't cope with the amount of energy he needed to channel and communicate so so many strongly-tethered ghosts at once; he remembers the sweat on the back of his neck, and the way his hands had looked when he held them up to the light, as though you could see the blood through them. "The... I knew there was something down here, but then the key went missing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So it's arriving in my room is </span>
  <em>
    <span>more </span>
  </em>
  <span>than highly suspect, then."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'd say we're doing exactly what Elias wants," Jon frowns at the key, and wishes it looked more malignant. It just looks cheap, and old. "I don't know if our </span>
  <em>
    <span>knowing </span>
  </em>
  <span>that gives us any advantage at all, or if I'm just... if it's just wishful thinking."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin steps forward and there's the ghost of a touch against the hand that Jon isn't using. He wishes Martin would do something more, something more declaring, a - hug, or a - kiss to the - cheek - his own face scarlet with the considering of it - but no. If the brush of knuckles against his thumb is enough to set Jon off, he thinks he's best saving that until afterwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because there will be an afterwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We can't just not go down," Martin says, as though willing Jon to disagree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, we can't," Jon says, and is rewarded with Martin's look of shock.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira clears her throat. "Despite being predicted, or second-guessed, this doesn't actually change our situation. We're going into the place this spirit finds most comfortable, and he'll have the advantage whether he was expecting us or not. Yeah?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah," Jon says. He stares at the key, and wills his hand to turn it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually Martin reaches over his shoulder, folds his hand over Jon's, and turns the key in the lock with the barest noise of chambers clicking apart. His hand lingers there a long while. "Jon..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We need to go," Basira says, brushing between them, and Jon lets his hand slip out from under Martin's, "Every second since he's heard that noise is a second we're wasting. Come on."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She goes first. Jon stands there in front of Martin and with everything he has he's begging him to say something. Asking him to interrupt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"We need to go down," Martin says softly, like he knows what Jon wants from him, like he regrets he can't give it, "We can't leave Basira... and Daisy and Tim and Sasha, what if they're... Jon, we can't."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Martin-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin reaches out and squeezes Jon's shoulder, and then leans, and the kiss lands on Jon's nose instead of on his mouth because Jon tips his head at the very last second, and the regret is searing and painful and </span>
  <em>
    <span>awful. </span>
  </em>
  <span>"We will come out of this basement," Martin says like he can possibly promise that, "We will, and Jon - and Jon, I need to - we need to-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We do," Jon says, and before he can say anything more he follows Basira down the darkness, into the final frontier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds Basira waiting for him halfway down the stairs. "You're the only one of us that can see them," she says, and in her hand she has a gun and Jon recoils from the sight of it, because knowing someone is an armed officer and seeing it is something very different. If Basira sees his reaction she doesn't comment. "You see them, you go first. I'll spot you - as soon as you say the word I'll fire."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wish I had the gun," Jon murmurs mostly to himself as he overtakes her, the smell of the bottom floor hitting him now. Mildew, and decay, and the full rich scent of something dead long gone to rot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She scoffs very quietly. "Have you ever fired a gun before?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What gave me away? The bulging biceps, or the great height?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again Basira laughs. Again Jon stores something in his head to be done if they </span>
  <em>
    <span>(when </span>
  </em>
  <span>they) get back out of the basement; make Basira laugh without the stress underneath it. Now there's no light at all, Martin's body blocking most of it streaming down from the gun room as he climbs down the stairs, and that's something Jon hadn't considered; he can see ghosts, sure, but he can't see </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>in the pitch black. "Basira?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Uh-huh."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You have a - a torch, or anything?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No need, Jon," says Elias, the voice from so close to his face that Jon startles, cringing away so hard he's sure he's hit Basira. She stops a few steps from the floor, and Martin behind her, both of them asking in hissed and urgent whispers what's wrong - what's happening - Jon, what's going on -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Elias is here," Jon says sternly. He moves forward and he can feel the wash of the ghost through him, and he begins to feel better, less frightened, because Elias </span>
  <em>
    <span>can't </span>
  </em>
  <span>hurt him if he hasn't any corporeality left, and -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The hand that wraps around his wrist hard enough to bruise is corporeal enough. The chest he finds himself bumping into is thick and real as any other. "Surprised?" Elias says as sweet as sin into his ear, and now Jon can feel the cold of dead breath on him, and he shudders, and he wishes he had the gun after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon?" Basira. "What's happening? Tell me what's happening. Jon."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon grits his teeth, and Elias squeezes his wrist just a little bit more, until Jon swears he can hear something inside him cracking, the bones sliding against each other the way bones really shouldn't.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"They can't see me, still," Elias says conversationally, "But you can. And they'll be able to feel me. Do you want some light? I wouldn't dream of being an impolite host, and it's been so long since anyone's seen my... vision. Robert, of course, and lovely Barnabas, although he was in no fit state to admire it. Did you like my letters? I thought it was precious, how hard you tried to put it all together."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon," Martin says, his voice very faint and very frightened, "We can't see."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias drops his hand and Jon massages his wrist, two points aching where it was trapped between finger and thumb. "Tell them, then. I don't mind."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Elias is here," Jon says dark and angry, resenting that Elias instructed him before he could speak himself, "Elias is... I can hear and see him, but he's got body, too. He's... he-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you okay," Martin whispers, as though that will help any.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shrugs, even though none of them can see him. "Are you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And there is the sound of a match striking sulphur paper, and a candle lit in the far corner of the room; Jon can see now the illuminated corner there, the crumbling old stonework, and the candle in its wax-spattered dish. He cannot see Elias, but there is another sound and another and another, and there must be </span>
  <em>
    <span>hundreds </span>
  </em>
  <span>of them in the room, lit within half a minute, several matchboxes lying scattered and empty on the floor. The room is -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The room is a disappointment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon thought there might be some ritual stone here, like the Narnian table, or perhaps just an altar, or any number of Lovecraftian images he's been picturing ever since they couldn't find the key in the first place. Bodies. What there </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>is order - complete order - the room huge, far bigger than Jon had thought, and empty of any basement junk. No cardboard boxes, no old props, no Halloween costumes, no Christmas decorations.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a corner with several guttering candles clumped together, and there a sad and small pile of bones, topped by a skull and disjointed jawbone. Jon can easily guess who owns them. Owned them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is in the opposite corner a pile of paraphernalia, what he could have called junk if he didn't know any better; the gearstick from a car that crashed here many years ago, and the long gun that was stolen from here even longer ago, and the bullet that was used to shoot somebody in between. If Jon focuses he thinks he can hear the screaming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the floor, painstakingly carved out in a darker stone, there is a stylised eye. Two semicircles wrap around the central circular pupil; each semicircle has in turn two lines shooting directly out of it, curving just a little, eyelashes to a forgiving gaze. In the centre of the pupil Elias stands, hands in his pockets, smiling a little, staring directly at Jon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you like it?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The room?" Jon looks around, makes a show of doing so. "It could be nicer. Bit dusty."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira and Martin have moved forward. He can feel them, one at each shoulder, and it gives him immense comfort to know they're there, Basira and her gun and Martin and his hand - Jon could reach out and have it if he wanted, but he doesn't want Elias to know. Give him that power.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias just smiles. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It would be better, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>if he looked evil. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Elias should have a curled lip, a moustache, a white cat; instead he just looks like a middle-aged man who takes care of himself, the dark green suit and the eyes like synthetic green, manufactured, completely unnatural in the darkness of the room. "Do you know what I'm doing, yet? Have you worked it out? I had such high hopes for you, Jon. Elias was - nice, yes, but he's almost all run out. Do you know what to call me?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You know perfectly well that I know."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias shrugs. "I've liked this name best since the first one. I hated William and I hated Richard; they were both very boring. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Boring. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You should have seen them when I took them. For a while I thought Gerard would be my next, but he was... unhelpful. Elias was really a lucky find, you know."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gerry didn’t want to die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias makes a face like he can’t believe Jon has made it this far this naive. “Nor does anyone. Elias didn’t. Even I didn’t. I would have used him very well if it hadn’t been for that </span>
  <em>
    <span>woman.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gertrude,” Jon says as though he knows all about it, although in fact her name had made Gerry look so upset he hadn’t investigated further. “She stopped you, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She didn’t stop me,” Elias sneers now, the candles casting odd light onto his cheeks, “She just - she prevented me taking that body, and I wasn’t going to take her. She was perfect for the job, but she cared too much about that boy. A knife to her stomach minutes before I could get to her, and then she threw herself into the river, and - well, I would have admired it if it wasn’t so bloody annoying. But Jon, you must see the similarities. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>must.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Martin says and he’s doing a good job of not sounding terrified, “What’s going on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Evil monologue,” Jon says to make Elias snarl. He reaches out and touches Martin by the elbow, briefly, not long enough to give Elias any ideas, just long enough for Martin to lean into him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira says nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you have us here,” Jon continues, as though Elias poses no more threat than a fly tapping against glass, “Here’s the basement, here’s the… the trapped sins. There’s the tethers,” and it costs him a lot more than he thought it would to wave at the heap of trinkets that, right now, are the only things keeping his friends on this plane, “Here is everything. Well done. Round of applause. Why won’t you just kill us?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know I can’t,” Elias says, arms folded like Jon is just a student underperforming in class. “Her - </span>
  <em>
    <span>she </span>
  </em>
  <span>is spare, but I need - all things must come in their time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You need me first.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At that last statement from Jon, Martin’s head whips round, his eyes wide. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tell me what’s happening.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Jon, tell us what’s happening,” Basira murmurs acerbically, her dark fingers fiddling with the safety catch on the gun. He finds it impossible to tell who she’s exasperated with, him or the unseen ghosts, but either way she doesn’t sound frightened in the slightest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m the next body,” Jon watches Elias carefully to see his face twitch with the truth of it, “I’m the next body he needs to complete… whatever he wants to do down here. He’s used up almost all of Elias, and there isn’t enough left for it. He needs to use me to get it done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what does that mean for the pair of us?” Martin’s hands flutter by his sides again, like he’s looking for something to do with them. He looks unseasy. “Me and Basira-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As though there is any other pair of them, anyway. “I think you’re safe until he gets me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If he gets you, Jon,” Martin is looking at him and he’s willing Jon to say something comforting, Jon can </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, can feel it everywhere. “Where is he?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks into those green, glimmering eyes. “Everywhere,” he says, and Elias smiles wider. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>William is frightened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The year is 1856. He knows that, because he wrote it at the head of the letter he wrote Adelaide earlier in the day, telling her that he loved her and to name the child Francis after his own aunt. He knows the year is 1856, no matter how hard his eyes try to convince him otherwise. He knows. His name is William Elliott, he is in love with Adelaide Elliott, they have a child on the way, her name will be Francis, and the year is 1856, and he should have known better than to go hunting for things he has no business involving himself in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it had been too much temptation. Blackwood House, the secrets wrapped up there, the long months Mordechai Lukas spends off the moors hunting in the forests with all his strange, secretive, insular friends and their guns and their dogs and their way of smiling like they know you most intimately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes. Too much temptation. Far too much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was too young to have met Jonah Magnus </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>Barnabas Bennett, far too young, but he is still a young man of society, and word gets around. He remembers being in his teens and sitting awkward at the dinner table with the younger officers of the regiment, and Mordechai Lukas had been in the corner nursing his umpteenth brandy, and William had leaned across the table and asked what all that was about. He had been playing jack changes at the time, and Morris had just flung down an ace and changed the suit to hearts, the only one William had none of. At the time he had been annoyed. Now he thinks it was a sign.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's the heir to the Lukas estate," Morris had whispered, when he had claimed all William's cards and most of the pot in the centre of the table, "And I think he has some state in what Magnus left behind him. He's always down in Devonshire. Oh, they said he'll take a wife, but he's much too old and much too disinclined now. Did you know the rumours he had his sis-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's impolite," another man had smacked Morris on the arm. William can't remember who. He remembers being intrigued by the vaguest hint of something unusual - unnatural - unordinary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Tell me more."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, you know about Magnus? And Bennett?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>William had shaken his head. He was only seventeen then, and the height his gossip had reached were a few secret engagements his own sisters would giggle about when he was within earshot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Morris had laughed. "Delicious! It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>so </span>
  </em>
  <span>dramatic. I don't know much about it myself. Magnus was always - you know, Jonah Magnus, he inherited pots of money and the estate in Devon - he was always a little odd, and very small, you know. And he hung around with Lukas and the rest. Everyone used to joke they were a church. They would be seen in the season at all hours with von Closen, that man who died, terrible tragedy, and of course Smirke was wrapped in all of it, and lots of hangers-on. Lukas was one of the main fellows, and so was Bennett."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes, yes," William had leaned close, eager, excited for rumours beyond society pages, "And-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And so one day, so it goes, Bennett went to Magnus. </span>
  <em>
    <span>So it goes </span>
  </em>
  <span>that they were involved," Morris wriggles his eyebrows in a disgusting manner and William recoils and makes all the right faces. "Precisely what I thought. And so he goes to the house to look for Magnus, and Magnus has gone mad. He says he needs a sacrifice to usher in a new world, something like that, and Bennett... and there was an explosion. The basement of the house was sealed off. It was all so secretive, but Lukas was sniffing around the estate then, and he brings himself and some hunting pals up when it's deer-stalking time."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And Bennett and Magnus?" William had asked, leaning even further in, until he could smell the alcohol on his own breath reflected from Morris and again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, dead. Killed. Tragic accident, that sort of thing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now William is here, and the year is 1856, and he loves his wife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You can see me," says Jonah Magnus. His touch is cold, and it lasts all over William's skin. "You've always been able to see things that weren't there."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, no, no I haven't..."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The faces in the streets. The eyes in the windows. The voices in the fog."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>William curls up, presses his hands against his ears. "No, no, no-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The </span>
  <em>
    <span>dead."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"No!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jonah Magnus reaches out again, and reaches in, and his hand is around William's throat inside his neck and he cannot breathe and he cannot swallow and it hurts so much. It hurts so much. "You have to give yourself to me," he whispers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Semantics. It all boils down to semantics.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I give myself to you," William chokes so that the pain will stop, and then the pain stops and everything stops and William Elliott, in every sense that is meaningful, ceases to exist. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Fucking move over," Melanie has her foot firmly pressed to the mat, the engine shuddering to try and comply with how fast she wills it to go. "Come on-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie sits with her phone in her lap. Neither of them are answering calls. They're still two hours away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin wakes up and he is warm. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He knows this is par for the course, and so he dismisses the little part of him telling him that isn’t normal. Of course he is warm. He smooths his hands over the sheets, around the hollow Jon made there when he woke up this morning, and enjoys the pleasant smell of a bed that has been slept in by himself and the man he loves. And he loves Jon. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Most intimately he loves Jon. This is nothing surprising, and so he isn’t surprised. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Good morning,” says Jon as he says every morning, carrying the two mugs into the room. Herbal tea for him; thick, good coffee for Martin, made the way he’s learning to like, in the cafetiere with the hand-ground beans. Jon did that for him. Martin always used to spoon it out, and use too much milk. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jon is the finer things in life, and his hands only tremble a little when he sets the mugs on the beside locker, more a sign of overwork than of any other infirmity. “Are you okay?” He asks, when Martin still doesn’t reply. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Of course I am,” Martin says. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Jon gets back into bed and kisses him, he is as shocked as he thinks he might be if this were the first time, which it isn’t. Which it can’t be. They have a life together, and a bed, and a cafetiere, and Jon grinds coffee beans in the morning because he has always been more prone to the sunrise than Martin, and they watch TV on Martin’s laptop and Jon always falls asleep before the end. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His mouth tastes of honey. Martin kisses him harder. Like this is the first time. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Is this the first time? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I love you,” he whispers, and it’s true. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Basira is in her favourite haunt, sitting across from Dekker. He is pouring sugar into his coffee. He is on his fourth sachet, and he doesn’t look like stopping soon; he has the little ceramic cup full of them at his elbow, and he isn’t discriminating between brown and white, just pouring whatever falls first between his fingers into the takeaway cup. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s holding tea. Caffeine doesn’t do it for her on their long night shifts; it makes her paranoid, twitchy, more likely to turn for shadows and ignore the real deal. Dekker doesn’t mind. He bought her the tea. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker doesn’t mind about anything. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you happy, Hussain?” He asks, licking sugar off his thumb. His eyes are bright. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Me?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker makes a show of looking around. They’re in the McDonalds nearest the station, drinking McCafe’s finest, and Basira wouldn’t be anywhere else for all the gold in Spain. “Do you see any other Hussains in here?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She smiles. “Guess not.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Happy. Are you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span> “I think I must be,” she watches him stir the coffee with the long wooden stick, the moisture clinging to his hands and the length of it pinched between finger and thumb. “Are you happy?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker smiles. He’s an old man, or at least, older than Basira thought you could be while still being in active service, but this subsection of the Met is so different that the rules probably don’t apply. His hair is salt-and-pepper fading to grey in the centre, and his face is wrinkled with a depth of facial expressions made over the years, and his eyes seem washed-out blue to grey from the amount of… Basira knows it’s stupid, but when she looks at him all she can think is that he has the appearance of a man who has seen everything he has. “I think I must be happy, yes,” he says, “I like this coffee, and I’m awake, and I’m enjoying the conversation we’re having.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“More generally, then,” Basira says. The tea tastes okay. Better than McDonalds tea usually tastes. She cups it between her palms and lets the heat share itself with her. “Are you happy with your life?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker looks at her like he often looks at her, like he knows how much she sacrificed to be here. In an understaffed McDonalds near Finchley at two in the morning, her closest friend in Devon, her closest companion an old man who tells her nothing about his life. “I am. Are you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I am,” she says and means it. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon looks from Basira, sitting with her hands curled around invisible air, to Martin lying on the ground and staring up at something only he can see. “What did you do to them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know what I did,” Elias waves his hand dismissively and whatever Martin and Basira are experiencing, together or separate, continues on. “I tried to do it to you. Give you a happy dream to keep you satisfied, but you saw through it. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>see </span>
  </em>
  <span>through it. Do you know why Gerard was useless to me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He couldn’t see them,” Elias is so close now. Jon can smell his breath, or the absence of his breath, the smell of dust and book-pages. “He only saw me when I </span>
  <em>
    <span>forced </span>
  </em>
  <span>him to. It was that Gertrude woman I should have gone for, but she was tied to so many other places, and she must have known I wanted her. She hasn’t been back. I don’t even know if she’s still alive, but she won’t risk it - she was the one who could see me. See us. You’ve always been able to see the spirits, haven’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon backs up, although he doesn’t want to, but Elias is taller than him and wider than him and probably stronger than him, too. “Yes,” he says, although he doesn’t want to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that. Did you know Elias could, too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could Jonah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias waves his hand dismissively. “Of course I could. I’ve always been able to see the things that are really there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So </span>
  <em>
    <span>why this?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon casts his arm all about the room, catching the bones in the corner, the candles scattered all over the floor, the little pile of tethers to his friends, and to Martin and Basira lost in dream worlds of their own creation. The eye on the floor. “What else could you hope to see?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everything. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Everything. </span>
  </em>
  <span>What else? Basira is dreaming about a man she admires,” Elias creases his forehead in momentary concentration, “She thinks he is impressive and that he knows so, and she is proud to have become his partner. Martin is dreaming about you. Do you want to know what he thinks you are doing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Jon manages to bite out, although he does. Oh, he does. “No - Elias, Jonah - what’s worth all this… all these bodies? Not seeing. Never seeing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a god, you know,” Elias steps back and away and into the centre of the stone pupil again. “The Eye. She is my companion. She gives me things. She gave me the strength to kill Barnabas. Do you know how I did it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon manages to shake his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did it while he was watching. He was kneeling in front of me, he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>begging </span>
  </em>
  <span>me to stop, and I had the knife over my heart, because I knew he had a soft spot for the bard even if he told us all that Shakespeare talked too much. I held the knife above me and I waited until he was crying and then I reached out and I didn’t kiss him before I cut his throat. Would it have been crueller if I had?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But - but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But he brought something of his own,” the lip curls. The eyes flash. “One living spirit, or four half-gone. I have three. Which one should be my fourth?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Neither of them,” Jon snaps, “Neither of them. None of them. Nobody ever again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You will be my eyes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t take them unless I say yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias narrows his eyes. “I can make you say yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t make me see things that aren’t real.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>you, </span>
  </em>
  <span>no, you’re very right about that,” Elias says, and Jon wishes he hadn’t said anything at all. “I wonder who else in this room will see things that aren’t real? How far will you let it go?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jonah-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin crams his hand over his mouth to stop his scream. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jon is dead and it is all his fault. He can’t remember how it happened, but there is blood on his hands, and there is blood on the white carpet of his mother’s old house, the place they had to sell when she got too bad to live there on her own. Martin, she had said, and her voice had been reedy and thick with spittle she was too weak to swallow, Martin, why won’t you come home?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And what was he meant to say? I’m frightened of you, mum. When you say things to me I don’t know who you think you’re talking to. The bus ride from here to Next is too far, and they’ll get rid of me if I’m late for the morning shift again, and you get free home help on the NHS. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He doesn’t say any of that. Jon is dead and it is all his fault. Everything is his fault, she says, and he knows she’s telling the truth, because why would she lie? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You can always trust me, Martin, she tells him. I’m your mother. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He remembers the feeling of satisfaction he got when Jon told him he could really cook. When Jon took his hand, his thumb small and frail in between Martin’s fingers, and held him so tightly that Martin knew it would take more than time to seperate them. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon is dead,” says a voice he knows he recognises from somewhere, “And is that blood on your hands? Oh, Martin. What else have you got to live for?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nothing,” Martin says. It’s true. Jon is dead. Where is Jon? There is nobody on the carpet, but there is blood, more than could possibly leave a body living, and his mother will be so annoyed at the stains in the white. “I have nothing anymore.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Precisely,” purrs the voice, “You haven’t anything at all. Don’t you think you should just… leave it all behind?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“But Jon is dead and Basira is gone and you have nobody else in the world to help you. What good are you doing sitting around here?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon watches in horror as Martin moves, dreams floating across his face, and Elias is holding out a knife for him, and the handle is stained brown with very, very old blood. “You can’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could always take the other one,” Elias muses, twitching the knife away from Martin’s grasping hands at the last second, “Provided you give me your </span>
  <em>
    <span>eyes, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon. The exchange is really quite simple. Do you get it yet?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I always got it,” Jon spits. Elias is holding out the knife to him now, handle first. The blood is very old. “I’m not giving you my eyes. I’m not giving you my anything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do I need to show you something else?” Elias cocks his head to the side as though Jon is no more interesting than a bug crawling where he shouldn’t. He lifts his hand. “Do you want to see this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A scream in trio. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sasha’s eyes, Tim’s mouth, Daisy’s high and perilous cheekbones. The hair has the texture of Sasha’s, the explosion, the colour of Daisy’s, the washed-out yellow of it, the sleek vibrancy of Tim’s. The scream has three voices to it, two feminine and one down low but just as painful, and as Jon watches Elias does something complicated in the air with his hand and he can hear Daisy sobbing through them, and he can hear Tim praying, and he can hear nothing but silence from Sasha, which is somehow even worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop it!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias does. “Have you had enough?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What will happen if I-” Jon looks to the side and Martin is standing with his hand held out and tears running down his cheeks, and Basira is kneeling with her eyes closed, “If I give you my - my eyes-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Jon.” </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Tell me!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias, darting back and forth, is in one of his forward motions now. Jon can feel the rough stone wall pressing against his skin through his shirt, the cold and the damp at it, and he hopes there aren’t any spiders hiding in errant corners. The body smells the same. The tongue flickers out to touch the lips. “They’re still here, you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon closes his eyes as Elias leans in even further. He wants to turn his face away, but he can’t. He can’t move. He can’t do anything but see. “I don’t know what you - I don’t know what you mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes you do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I - I don’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Every last one of them,” Elias has his mouth on Jon’s jaw, his teeth scraping on the open-mouthed sibilants, “I hear James the loudest. He’s the most recent. Elias is just behind the eyes looking out.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon has never been kissed by a corpse before now, but the hot dry crisp of it makes him gag. “Fu-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Richard, James, Elias… a whole heap of men like you, Jon. Men who could see. Imagine how much more I could see with your help. Imagine how much </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>would see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“N-no-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So much,” Elias whispers, “And all ours. Mine. Yours. Kings of a seen world. Don’t you want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Martin says and steps forward blindly. “Jon, I’m sorry-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let him go,” Jon says. “Please let him go.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You know how to stop something like this?” Dekker’s car is a Subaru from the 90s. It smells mostly of cows; he bought it third-or-fourth hand from one of the senior students at the RVC, for about two hundred pounds in the car park of the Asda out there. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Basira shrugs. “Shoot it?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Uninventive, Hussain. Think harder. Think cleverer.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Make it feel guilty?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dekker makes a face at her. “It’s an </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Basira. A thing. They don’t have feelings, they don’t want a hug, they don’t secretly long for human contact. They long to eat you. You can’t guilt something that can’t feel. So I ask again - how do you stop something like this?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re outside a house that Basira has been informed holds an incredible amount of cursed books. Books that make you cry blood, books that make you eat your own hands down to the wrists, books that make you stop existing at all. It’s early in the morning, so early she can smell the dawn on the air, and something underneath that; bodies, and the damp of a basement. In the back of her head she knows there’s something wrong. “You burn it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You </span>
  </em>
  <span>burn </span>
  <em>
    <span>it, Hussain, top of the class. Gold star,” Dekker pats her on the arm. “I knew it was in there somewhere. What would you burn it with? How long would you wait?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Until nothing can get out.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Until nothing can get out.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Basira touches her cheeks, and when she brings her hands down there are teardrops on her fingertips. “This isn’t real, Adelard.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I know it isn’t.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What do I do?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He smiles the way he always does. “You burn it. Have you forgotten already?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Basira breaks out of the dream with a heaving, painful breath, her whole throat ragged, her hands dry, her cheeks dry, and the smell of the dead in her nostrils. Her hands are scraped damp on the stone floor, and her eyes have to adjust from the bright yellow of Dekker’s car to the dim glow of the candlelight. She can hear Martin crying - he cries like he does everything, small, silent, as though at any minute someone will tell him to shut up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your eyes, Jon,” she can hear someone new saying, in a voice so mundane Basira finds it difficult to align the words with the tone. A voice that boring shouldn’t threaten. He should be buying office supplies. And yet: “I need them, and you need to give them to me, or I will make Martin suffer far more than I think you would ever want him to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I - I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You burn it, Hussain. You burn it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Help me, Jon. You know you want to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s the noise of someone hitting the wall, hard, and exhaling, and then of skin contacting flesh. A punch, too thick to be a slap, and Basira has both given and received plenty to recognise the sound of it. “Help me, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira turns her head, acting as though she’s still in whatever dream she fell into earlier, keeping her eyes as wiped-clean as she can. Jon’s lip is bleeding, swelling up, and his eyes are wide and wild and frantic, like someone trapped with no escape. There is the man she has never seen before, not in real life - only in missing-persons documents from the station on long nights. Cold cases. Elias Bouchard has changed eye colour, much like shrugging on a different coat, and he looks leaner, thinner, more vicious. “Take Tim,” he commands, and doesn’t look at Jon, just glides over to the little pile of trinkets on the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looks as though he’s going to be sick, Basira thinks. He keeps looking at Martin. He keeps looking at - Martin, all the time, as though next time he looks Martin will have vanished. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tim is a bullet. When Jon picks it - him - up, there is the sound of someone dying all around the room, something Basira has heard only once, and the wheezy breath of someone who cannot do it anymore. “Tim, I - Tim-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He can’t hear you, as you very well know,” Elias spares not a single glance for either Basira or Martin. In one hand he holds a long antique gun; in the other, the round knob of a gearstick. “Neither can they. They’re trapped inside the tethers. Didn’t you learn anything?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did,” Jon says. Basira can see where quiet, secretive tears have collected beside his nose and in the divot of his upper lip. “I just hoped…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias shrugs. “You learn not to do that. Put him there, please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias and Jon arrange the objects - the tethers, Elias had said - on the end of each of the stylised eyelashes, one on each curving length, until there is only one spot unfilled. Jon’s hand shakes, and there is a long moment where Basira thinks he won’t let go of the bullet. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Let go, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Please. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>You burn it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dekker always said her name like he was proud of her. When she was officially assigned to come down to Devon, to leave London for however long it would take, he had clapped her on the shoulder and told her he was proud. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I know you’ll do exactly what I would have. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Hussain, you burn it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her lighter eats a hole in her pocket. She can feel it heavier than it should be, and hot, too, like it knows she wants to use it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re off the motorway now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quicker,” Melanie urges the world around her, or possibly just herself. “Come on come on come on…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgie knows there’s something wrong. She can feel it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And Jon is dead and it is all his fault. The white carpets, Martin! The stains! You need to fix it. Fix your mess. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Okay,” he says dully. Jon is dead. He misses having someone to fall back on. He misses the knowledge that he would be caught if he tripped. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Blood on the walls, too. There was a picture of Martin in first-year up there, but his mother took it down when he left after his GCSEs. She said it hurt too much to look at. Knowing what could have been. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias is distracted. Basira can see that. He’s gloating, up close to Jon, watching every jolt and turn with pleasure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Take the opportunity, Hussain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin,” she breathes, low enough that she can hardly hear herself, moving towards him in a gesture meant to appear random. She is still dreaming. Don’t look. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Martin.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>His face is wet and grimy where the cobwebs in the room have clung to his sticky cheeks, and where he has touched the wall and then his face, and Basira wonders what he’s seeing. Who he’s seeing. She has been his friend for a long time but he hasn’t ever told her the details about much of anything; she relies on context clues to parse out his life from him, as though that makes anything better. She knows he wishes he’d stayed in school, finished sixth form if nothing else, and she knows he needed to work more than he needed to learn, and she knows his mother was in a home for the last years of her life, and she knows Martin regrets it all. She knows he cares for Jon. “Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira can see the moment Martin stops living that nightmare and starts existing in this one. His pupils go wide and shuddery, and finally focus on her. “Ba-Basira?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She presses her finger to her lips, and nods over at Elias, although she suspects Martin still won’t be able to see him. He’s standing now in the pupil of the stone eye, a few inches off the ground, his hands gripping Jon’s shoulders tightly, and talking about the eye that overlooks; Jon is shaking so violently that Basira can see it from here, and his chin is red and bloody with the cut from his lip. “I won’t let you,” Jon is saying, “I w-won’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you want me to take the other one, then,” Elias says. He licks the pad of his index finger,  swipes it across Jon’s bloody lip, and puts the result in his mouth. “Basira Hussain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon wrenches one shoulder out of Elias’s grasp. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Neither </span>
  </em>
  <span>of them!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Melanie and Georgie, wasn’t that their names?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re in London, and you’re not - you’re not getting them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, London. Silly me. Of course they are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin turns his face back to Basira. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What is going on, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he mouths, although she thinks he knows the answer to that already - even if he’d rather not. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In reply she wriggles around on the floor until her pocket is within her reach, disguised by a casual pass down to her hip in the dream Elias must still think she’s enthralled by. The lighter is in the depth of her pocket, cut wide and accessible by a tailor Dekker had taken her to, and when she grasps it in her fist, she feels for the first time a shiver of hope. This might work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dekker always told her it was ingenuity that keeps you alive, not talent, not skill. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Catch them off guard. Make them pay. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’ll go for you first,” Basira whispers, watching Elias. “He thinks that’ll hurt Jon more. He’ll go for you, and as soon as you feel the knife-” she wonders what it looks like to Martin, the thing and the slippery blade waving through the air on its own- “As soon as you feel it you flick the lighter on and hold it behind you, okay? Okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” he breathes, and slowly, painstakingly, Basira passes him the lighter in a series of unconscious moves. “What will you do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira is already shuffling towards the heap of old bones and the carefully-placed candles. “The rest of it.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It could have been five minutes or six hours. Days, maybe. Weeks. Jon’s head burns with the effort of keeping it all straight, the events, but Elias can’t just see - he can change things for him. Change things in the room. In the world. Jon watches Georgie tell him she always thought he should leave, get out of the way of her and Melanie; he watches Basira tell him he isn’t good enough for Martin; he watches Martin tell him he would never love somebody like </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon. </span>
  </em>
  <span>There’s a knife from somewhere, coming for his eyes, and Gerry is holding it. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You didn’t remember me, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Gerry says mournfully, and the knife is covered in old blood - no, new blood, and why did Jon ever think it was old? - </span>
  <em>
    <span>You didn’t remember me. You broke your promise, Jon. Give me your eyes. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Jon really tries he can see clearly. Martin and Basira on the floor, and the candles, and the bones, and the sound of his friends screaming. He should have worked harder. He should have pulled Sasha down from the air - he should have listened to Tim - he should have found Daisy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As soon as he realised what he felt he should have told Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If you give me your eyes, you’ll remember me. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gerry, no!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time the knife passes lower, and Jon ducks away but he can feel it anyway, slicing through the space between two ribs. Hot butter. He never thought skin could be like that. Flesh, really. “I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You should have listened to me in the kitchen. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tim, I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon!”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jon? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon crouches, hands pressed over his ears, eyes squeezed shut, and tries to make his mind belong to him again. He is certain about only the things he can feel, and nothing he can hear or sound or smell is sacred, nothing is real - for all he knows Elias has shunted them back up to the house, or out into the woods, or back towards the lake. But he presses his thumbs into his cheeks. He has skin, still, and there is hot wet on his side he knows must be from the knife. But not Gerry. Not Tim. None of them. Elias. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That voice isn’t Elias. Jon opens his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re still in the basement, of course they’re still in the basement, and Elias - and Elias - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin is a big man, but a knife does a lot to level the playing field. Jon can see the ribbon of red along the line of his throat, the sharp edge of the blade only resting there, and still digging in. Still hurting. “Jon,” he says again, “I can’t see, Jon, I can’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay, you’re okay-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give me your eyes and I won’t take him,” Elias hisses over Martin’s shoulder. “It won’t be bad, Jon. You’ll work </span>
  <em>
    <span>with me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin squeezes his own eyes shut, but Jon can see the wet on his eyelashes. “Don’t give - don’t, Jon, whatever it is, don’t-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All Jon has done since he came to Blackwood House is hurt Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elias’s eyes are glimmering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His own hands are shaking. He has never been more exhausted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He isn’t sure he will remember how to breathe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And you want the knife?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And you want the knife. The bookshelf fell. Who was there to tell Barnabas not to come? Did he know it was a trap? Could he feel the net snapping up around him?)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Martin whispers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Elias encourages. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon steps forward and almost stumbles. His head is light, and his shirt is sticking to his side, and he doesn’t know what’s taking more of his time right now - the effort to see what’s really there, or the effort of standing without falling. “M-martin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And Sasha just wanted someone to turn the pages.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And Tim just followed his brother.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(And Daisy just wanted to get something to eat.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Gerry just wanted to be - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon-”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Jon-” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There is the smell of spirits, and heat, and then the bones in the corner, and the candles, and the screams get louder, and the clattering of metal to the floor, and the screaming, and the burning, and the eye in the centre of it all winks and blinks and Martin is shouting and there is hot wet on Jon’s fingers and Elias is telling him nobody will ever love him the way he could have if only Jon had understood and now the world is nobody and now nothing is ever going to not be his fault again and the fire and the burning and the smell of someone else’s blood and everyone Jon has ever loved screaming in unison. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Drive!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Barnabas stands where Jonah has told him to, long-limbed, gentle, in the middle of the eye Robert has made. He can practically hear Robert ordering dark granite, Jonah with his chin hooked possessive over his shoulder, because Jonah only likes for the men he loves to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>his. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Men he plays with. Jonah does not love. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Barnabas knew that going in, and still he gave his heart to him, in spilled ink and dinner and wine, and long nights with Mordechai Lukas, and quick encounters by the lake, and looks across society balls as though both of them know better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know this is all for the best, my love,” Jonah says. He is small, but Barnabas has never let that lie to him. Jonah wields everything like a weapon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Barnabas says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know that I treasure you beyond all else?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know I want you more than Mordechai does?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you listen to Robert?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Barnabas has not been thinking about Robert on purpose. “I - I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Tell me.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. No, I didn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then everything is ready. We’ll both see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jonah comes behind him, and there is the curve of the knife in his hand, the one he uses to gut trout they catch in the river. Slick with scales, usually, and the innards running over their hands, and the dogs under the table begging for a bite, but now it is clean and silver and deadly and cold when it sits on Barnabas’s throat. “Are you ready?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Barnabas swallows and feels the knife bob. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Feels for the gift Robert enclosed with his last letter. In his pocket. Not a deadly thing, under usual circumstances. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And when Jonah cuts his throat, like the trout on the table, like the dog under the chair begging for a bite, Barnabas is ready with the beautiful letter-opener. It’s too lovely a thing for something like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jonah does not make a sound when he dies. Barnabas does not either, apart from the gurgling of the bits of him that do not work anymore desperately trying to anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nobody ever finds them. Their bones pile up in the corner. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>&lt;3 hope that was... Something.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Ash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi guys! it's been a blast. this is another 11k chapter, so i hope as a conclusion it's satisfying - i had real fun with all of this. emotions to follow at the bottom :&gt;</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gerard Keay hopelessly, distractingly, <em> painfully </em>adores Gertrude. He knows she feels nothing more than vague like for him, more out of a lack of anyone with their interests than because of anything he has done specifically, but if he pretends that he doesn’t know this he can continue travelling with her, and helping her, and making her tea the way she likes it, and listening to her when she wants him to and when she doesn’t. She’s on the phone a lot to a man called Adelard, who she rings late at night from the BT phoneboxes when she thinks Gerard is asleep in the car. </p><p>Gerard asked her once, rather self-consciously, if she would call him Gerry. </p><p>“Nicknames are just things for people to hide behind,” Gertrude had said. She was holding her favourite shotgun at the time, and the Barbour jacket that makes her look a little like if Miss Marple went insane. “Do you have the arsenic?”</p><p>Gerard had the arsenic. They went and killed some people. </p><p>So it goes. </p><p>Even though he knows Gertrude is not a nice person, or even a <em> good </em>person, he can’t help but like her. When he dies (which he does as a sort of interlude to the rest of his life; he spent the first seventeen years going mad in a prison of his mother’s creation, and then the next five in some earthly paradise, and now forty in a prison of his own) he thinks she might come get him. </p><p>Fuck that. He thinks she might be <em> sad. </em>Maybe Gertrude will come to his bones, he muses, back when he had the sanity to muse, and she will touch them and she will see him, because Gertrude Robinson can see what Gerard was never able to. </p><p>Ghosts. All manner of beasties. </p><p>When Elias Bouchard shows up and holds his hand and soothes him, his voice beautifully uncertain and his eyes beautifully blue, he calls Gerard <em> Gerry.  </em></p><p>“I’m here researching,” he says seriously. Blue eyes, blue-blue eyes. Gerry’s were always green, and he thinks Gertrude might have picked him for that, too. </p><p>“Oh, researching,” Gerry nods. He knows <em> all </em>about researching. (Did you know gun oil clings to your skin, and you can never quite get rid of the smell?)</p><p>Elias is a small man, smaller than Gerry, and he nods and smiles and does all with a lazy energy that makes Gerry marvel. “Researching. I’m into the esoteric, and I can - see - see - people like you. Everyone says Blackwood House is one of the last true spots of weird… happenings, and I want to find out what it is. I <em> will </em>find out what it is.”</p><p>“It killed me,” Gerry says, “But you knew that already.”</p><p>Elias shrugs. “I guessed. Did you know that, like, six people have gone missing in mysterious circumstances around the house, and all of them have been interested in the esoteric? All of them have claimed to be ghost hunters of one kind or another?”</p><p>“I know,” Gerry says, and then feels the need to stress the point: “It isn’t like I died of <em> natural circumstances, </em>Mr. Bouchard.”</p><p>Elias is handsome, with a touch of the wicked to him. He waves his hand. “I won’t die. It won’t kill me. You know I can see them too?”</p><p>“You’re talking to one of them right now.”</p><p>“Yeah, yes, sure. Of course. But I can see them.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Elias is silent, and Gerry figures he’s disappointed him somehow; finding a skeleton in the woods should be your big break, but all Gerry’s done is die and go crazy from exposure, and somehow fail to pass on. </p><p>“Gertrude.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Gertrude Robinson,” Gerry says, and wishes he had the blood to blush, “Do you know her? I used to travel with her. She was here when I - uh. Do you know her?”</p><p>The blank unfamiliarity on Elias’s face is genuine. “I’m sorry. If you want me to… track her down… if this is how you move on-”</p><p>“Oh, no, <em> Gertrude </em>isn’t my tether. These fucking bones are,” Gerry tries to slap his own skull and winces when his hand passes through the bone. “Hey, if you don’t know her, can you do me a favour?”</p><p>“Anything.”</p><p>“Destroy my tether. Please.”</p><p>Elias sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, humming thoughtfully. “I might - I mean, I might still need your help. Do you - can you - I’ll come back. When I know what the story with the house is. I’ll come back and I’ll burn the bones. Deal?”</p><p>Gerry doesn’t want to say deal, but he’s never had what he wanted, not as long as he’s lived. “Okay.”</p><p>Elias never comes back, and Gerard’s sanity slips away from him again, and he doesn’t remember anything of the years between his death and his passing, and sometimes when Elias is feeling particularly maudlin he will look out of the windows in Blackwood House and he will wish he knew who Gertrude was. </p><p>But that’s all in the past. </p><p> </p><p>When Melanie and Georgie reach the house, the fire has already got too firm a grasp on the walls to be stopped. Melanie watches it lick playfully at the downstairs window, like a kitten who hasn’t learned how hard to play yet. </p><p>“Chou!” Georgie leans forward, pointing with her free arm, and Melanie watches a streak of sooty kitten charge across the stone drive towards the forest and the lake. Towards safety. </p><p>“They’re still in there,” Melanie says. She knows it in cold, dread certainty. </p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“We have to go in.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Melanie leans over the gearstick and puts her hand on Georgie’s forearm. “And you know I love you?”</p><p>Georgie smiles at her this time, with something real behind it. “I love you too.”</p><p>And that, when you come down to it, is really all there is to say. </p><p> </p><p>The burning smell is everywhere. In his nose, in his eyes, making both leak a clear liquid that might be mucus or tears, in his ears making sure all he can hear is the dull roar of it, in his clothes, in his skin, meaning he’ll never be anything other than what the fire makes him. He can only see shapes, and impressions where people once where, and a shadow against the wall that must be the thing Jon can see all the time. The Sasha suspended from the library ceiling. </p><p>“Jon!”</p><p>He stumbles on. </p><p> </p><p>She thinks about Dekker, and how he kept his first name like a talisman for the woman he would ring on that awful old Motorola flip phone he had in his breast pocket. He was Dekker to the world that fought with him and explored with him and admired him, but when he would answer calls on the Motorola (so old it doesn’t even have internet access) and Basira would slide around to listen in, he would sag. Finally look his age. </p><p><em> “Adelard,” </em> the woman on the other end would say, <em> “How are you doing?”  </em></p><p>He would look to the left and the right, but never behind, which was where Basira was. “I’m okay. How are you?”</p><p>Nobody ever calls him Adelard. Just <em> her. </em> </p><p> </p><p>If you had told Jon when he was a child that the sound of screaming would become so commonplace to him he would start getting bored and irritated at it, instead of frightened, he would have called you a liar. Now as he curls up near the stone eye and tries not to burn, all he can think is - </p><p>Please die. Please, please die. He stopped being able to help any of the three of them a long time ago, if he was ever able to help them at all, and now all he wants is for Tim to see his brother again. Daisy to see her family. Sasha to finally see her friends. </p><p>Could he ever have helped them?</p><p>No. Jonah, or Elias, or whatever, he had all the tethers down here, bound so tightly to the ritual he was building that Jon would never have been able to prise them out. He doesn’t want to feel guilty about something he couldn’t possibly have changed, but here he is anyway, spending his final moments crying from the smoke and thinking about how highly Tim must have considered Daniel, towards the end, even when he had been shot by him. And it was by him. It would have to be by him. Poetic license would allow nothing else. </p><p>The ground claws at his palms and his knees as he crawls, forward or away he isn’t sure. In some direction. The stone is rough and untouched since Robert’s day, and Jon’s palms were hardly healed from the chandelier in any case; he can feel the hot of them, the wet of them, mingling with the pain in his side and the pain in his head and the pain in his knees to create one big ball of it. Jon is just a lump of pain with extremities. </p><p>“Jon! Basira? Jon-”</p><p>“Martin,” Jon tries to say, but there’s a layer of smudge and smoke in his throat and he chokes it instead. He’s pretty sure Elias had shut the basement door when they came down, to stop anyone escaping before he was done with them, and who had set the fire without thinking to open it. He tries again. “M-Martin-”</p><p>Through the fug of orange and black, Jon finds and feels a hot arm. The cloth of a t-shirt. “Martin?”</p><p>“Jon,” Martin’s terrified face emerges out of the shadows, sooty and smudgy and bruised over one eye, but unbloody. “Oh my god. Are you okay?”</p><p>“Yes, yes,” Jon says hurriedly. He sits back on his legs with great effort, his arms trembling to push his weight up, and he can feel a hundred things he has to deal with pushing through the smoke. “Who has the basement key?”</p><p>“Basira, Basira does-”</p><p>“Find Basira, Martin,” Jon says his name just to have it on his tongue, passing through his lips. <em> Martin. </em>He never appreciated that, while he had the freedom to say it as often as he liked. Martin always looked a little surprised to be addressed by Jon, and then pleased, and his nose would turn pink as they ate lamb and new potatoes crushed with the bottom of their forks, and asparagus Jon had picked out in the farm shop down in the village, and they would sip at their terrible cider and smile at one another and Jon would fantasise about saying Martin’s name. </p><p>Martin looks anguished, properly, terribly conflicted. “But - Jon, you’re hurt-”</p><p>“We need to get out of here,” Jon says firmly, and because he knows he’s going to die and he knows none of this will matter in a moment, he leans forward. And up. </p><p>(And hurts his knees.)</p><p>“Jon,” says Martin, into the kiss. </p><p>Jon puts his bloody hand on Martin’s chin, his jaw, his cheek, splaying his spindly fingers out to cup him close and keep him where he is. Jon’s never been a good kisser because he hasn’t had the opportunity to kiss many people <em> without </em>the promise of more he’s unwilling to give, but they are dying. Martin won’t care. Martin can’t have even if he wants. Jon would give as much as he could. </p><p>Luckily for him Martin either doesn’t care, or is just as bad at this as he is. If he startles at the wet blood, Jon doesn’t notice; all he does is turn his head, just a little to the right, and his mouth opens just a little, and for the second their lips are pressed together Jon forgets to be worried about the dead. Martin tastes of smoke and strawberry chapstick. His lip is trembling. </p><p>“Jon-”</p><p>“Find Basira, <em> please,” </em>Jon says, moving back so he can see his own handprint across Martin’s face, the whorls of his fingers on his cheeks. “You need to get out of here.”</p><p>Martin’s eyes widen. “Jon, <em> you-”  </em></p><p>“Please?”</p><p>The fire has caught the bones of Bennett in the corner, and for now it seems content to eat away at them, burning and blackening them. “You promise me you’ll come out with us,” Martin reaches forward and clutches at Jon’s fingers, the whole ones, with a tightness that shocks him. “Jon. Jon, you have to promise.”</p><p>Jon swallows against the lie and the smoke. “I promise. I promise.”</p><p>Martin lifts the fingers to his mouth and kisses them, and his face is a mixture of the hope and the horror that Jon wishes he could never see again. “I’ll see you outside,” he says hoarsely, and then he vanishes into the smoke, and Jon is left with only someone else’s blood on his mouth and a case of trembling hands. </p><p>“That was… lovely.”</p><p>Jon crawls forward just a little further, until his hand hits one of the little bones belonging to the stack that was once Bennett; not an important bone, just one of the little balls that might have made up the neck or the spine. Jon isn’t great on anatomy. “Who’s there?”</p><p>“Me,” says a man that emerges from the smoke, on his knees, dressed in a plain shirt and trousers, his eyes the same glimmering shade of green Jon is sure he’ll see wherever he goes. There is blood on his stomach, and his cheeks are nausea-green. “You love that man, then?”</p><p>“You loved Barnabas?” Jon pokes the bone, and Jonah Magnus groans in pain. “Did you?”</p><p>Jonah laughs. He’s sallow, or at least, Jon imagines he might have been when he still had blood and bone and body that was his own; his nose is thin and pointed, and his lips, and the curve of his eyes, and he has the look of the smug muse about him, the sort of man Degas might have painted hanging over the banister at some society event, perfectly pleased with the place he’s found. He is small. Smaller than Jon had pictured him. In his mind’s eye he can see Bennett, a big man, a shy man despite his good looks, and how easily someone like this would have caught ahold of his arm and pressed his thin fingers to his cheeks, and kissed him and told him he was perfect. Come down to the house this weekend. You and I, and nobody else. </p><p>Please. </p><p>“I loved Barnabas as much as he loved me,” Jonah says, and when Jon grasps the bone between two slick fingers he all but screams. </p><p>Jon feels empty. No, he doesn’t. He’s filling up with something worse than he’s felt before, a sort of horrendous sucking power that he doesn’t want. “He really loved you. Anyone could see that.”</p><p>“I won’t beg,” Jonah whispers wet with fluid. “You can’t make me.”</p><p>“I don’t want to hear you beg.” Jon can hear Sasha’s sobs beginning to die off, and he guesses the fire has finally reached the sad tethers in the eye. He wonders what will happen when it gets to the upper floors. Will they be able to save anything? He should have told Martin to get them some clothes, throw them out the window. He’s not worried about Chou; she’s one of those cats so resilient they just bounce off unfortunate events, a little annoyed but no worse for the wear with it. She’ll find someone to take care of her. </p><p>Jonah screws up his face; Jon can see the floor through his cheeks. “Everyone… wants… something.”</p><p>“I want to know.”</p><p>“Hah!” Even the laugh sounds painful, although Jonah doesn’t have any body at all with which to voice it. Blood in his throat. “Hah - <em> know? </em>You want to know? What the hell do you think I did all this for?”</p><p>“That’s why I’m asking.”</p><p>Jonah painfully, achingly sits up, so Jon can see the length of his pale throat. “I did all this to <em> know,” </em> he says, and then winces as a little more of Bennett’s bones get eaten by the ever-hungry fire. “I only ever wanted to find things out. The Eye… it promised me. It <em> promised </em>me I could have it. I found the ritual in Albrecht’s books. You know about all that.”</p><p>“Albrecht von Closen,” Jon says, casting his mind back over a host of letters read only once. “He discovered those books in Germany. You killed him for the books?”</p><p>“He <em> died.”  </em></p><p>“But you killed him.”</p><p>Jonah twists his face up. “My first… was Barnabas. I don’t… I wouldn’t have…”</p><p>“You were saving it for him.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jonah says, and it sounds almost like it could be a sob on someone else’s lips. “I didn’t want him to… I would never have…”</p><p>“I don’t think he would have appreciated it,” Jon says. He’s tired. He wants to be with Martin. He wants to be able to breathe, and think, and exist without bleeding from a dozen different places. His head hurts. </p><p>Jonah laughs again. “No, he wouldn’t have. But… but you should have seen how they all looked at him.”</p><p>“So why Tim and Sasha and Daisy, then?” Jon pushes forward and ignores the image his mind gives him, the face Barnabas must have had as he died, the injured shock, “Why not James Wright… why not Elias?”</p><p>“You’re a fool if you haven’t worked it out.”</p><p>“I’ve guessed.”</p><p>“But you want to know,” Jonah says smugly, and then cries out as one of the bones finally succumbs, crumbling to ash right there in the stone. The screaming of the ghosts is so loud that Jon can hear nothing over it, no Martin, no Basira, and he can only hope they’ve reached out okay.</p><p>“I want to know,” he says instead of any of that. </p><p>“Martin Blackwood can’t see ghosts,” Jonah croaks, “But you can. I need the <em> eyes, </em>Jon. You know - you know that. What use are his eyes to me? I need to wear the eyes of those that can see ghosts, and I wouldn’t want to waste those eyes on the ritual. Daisy was… luck, although I’m sure Mordechai never meant to give me the gift. Tim was purposeful. I just couldn’t help myself. Sasha was on the spur of the moment, but I never regretted it. I only needed one more. One more and I would have enough power - myself, the eyes, the spirits-”</p><p>“Are they in pain?” Jon asks, before Jonah can begin another monologue. <em> “Are they?” </em></p><p>“No. They’re dying. Their tethers just… they aren’t being naturally destroyed. Of course the souls are disconcerted.”</p><p>“Are you in pain?”</p><p>Jonah’s face flickers. “A… not an inconsiderable amount, yes.”</p><p>“Good,” Jon says, and finds he means it. The smoke is making him feel dizzy, incredibly so, and the heat is really uncomfortable now. Sweat prickles down his back in rivulets, collecting at his waistband and under his arms, and he thinks that if it gets much worse he won’t be physically capable of getting out of the basement. </p><p>The fire is really loud, now.</p><p>“Good,” he says again.</p><p>“Jon, you must know - if you let me within you, we could work together - we could work <em> together, </em>we could know, we could let the Eye fill both of us, and it would all have been worth it, Jon - Jon, you must listen to me -”</p><p>“I thought you said you weren’t going to beg,” Jon says with a calm he does not feel, and he reaches down and he picks up the smooth round bone and he thinks about Barnabas and Jonah falls silent and he tosses it with all his strength - </p><p>Into the fire. </p><p>Jonah does not stop rambling pleases and reasonings, but Jon stops listening to him, even as his voice fades and snaps and crackles with the flames. “Martin?”</p><p>He can hear Basira coughing, he thinks, and Martin shouting her name. </p><p>“Martin!”</p><p>“Basira-”</p><p>“Jon?”</p><p>“Basira!”</p><p>Martin?”</p><p>“Jon!”</p><p>He staggers onward into the fire. He knows there is something he needed to do, but he can no longer remember what it is. </p><p> </p><p>Martin finds Basira on her hands and knees, coughing painfully, her hijab covered in black soot, her cheeks stained with ash. “Basira-”</p><p>“I have the key,” she rasps, clutching onto his arm, “Is that your - your blood? We need to get out.”</p><p>“Jon’s blood,” Martin says, although he can’t remember seeing Jon bleeding from anywhere, and that worries him even more than if he’d seen any visible wounds. “We need to get him and we need to get out, Basira - the key-”</p><p>“I <em> have it,” </em>she repeats. With his help she stands, wobbling, and up higher Martin feels the smoke and the fire and the burning strong inside his head. Difficult to believe that it’s only been five minutes, maybe less, since the thing was set. </p><p>“We can’t go without Jon.”</p><p>“If we don’t go <em> now, </em>we’ll all die down here.”</p><p>“We need Jon,” Martin says, scouring the smoke and the fug and the amber room for any sign of him, but there is so much in the way he can hardly see his hand in front of his face, nevermind Jon, or whichever way the door might be. All he can see is the fire.</p><p>“We need to get out,” Basira coughs again, covering her mouth with her hand. “We’re - we’ll - if we don’t burn we’ll have the smoke, Martin, is any of that sinking in?”</p><p>“Basira-”</p><p>But she’s already diving into her pocket for the key, and finding them with an ease Martin wishes he could copy, the sound of them falling into her palm. “We have to <em> go.”  </em></p><p>“Basira-”</p><p>Martin is beginning to think he can hear something through the fog, other voices that aren’t Jon’s, a high and reedy English accent, a few voices sounding panicked and sobby, a susurration of whispers joining into a single voice shouting about eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes. </p><p>And over all that the sound of the fire. </p><p>Basira is standing now without his help and running towards the door, catching him by the sleeve and dragging him along and Martin is powerless against her, because he has never known what he should do but Basira knows everything about everything all the time. Her grip is punishing tight. He imagines his wrist is Jon’s, and he sees it snapping in half from the inside out, the bone crumbling sharp. </p><p>That’s what happened to the woman in the library. Sasha, and she had been pretty, or she looked like she might have been pretty when all her body parts still belonged to her. </p><p>Martin closes his eyes against the sudden rushing nausea, but he doesn’t fight when Basira hauls him up the stairs to the gun room, when she tries and fails and tries and fails and tries and fails to unlock the door - </p><p>“Let me,” he says, but he can still hear Jon. Jon is talking to someone down there. </p><p>Jon is with the dead. If you talk to someone long enough, you pick up their mannerisms, their ways of speaking, their little tics and twitches. If Jon spends all his life talking to the dead, will he eventually forget to live and breathe with the rest of the world? Start to beat his life to the rhythm of the dead?</p><p>Basira hands him the basement key, and the heat is pressing against Martin’s neck like a hand, and he tries and succeeds because his hands have always been steady, no matter what has come upon him. That’s always one place he’s succeeded. One way he has been useful. </p><p>Turning the key in the lock. The door opens and they both spill out, gasping, sweating, and now Martin can see Basira in the light there are clean tear-tracks down her cheeks completely dry from where the moisture has been eaten by the fire. The heat is burning up the ground. Already Martin can smell it, can hear it climbing the walls along the ivy. “Out,” Basira gasps, “We have to get out-”</p><p>Martin thunders out the room and up the stairs heedless. He can hear Basira shouting for him to <em> stop being such a fucking moron, Martin!  </em></p><p>Upstairs he’s in his room throwing things out the window. Jumpers. Books he’s had since childhood. Suitcases. His laptop, although he doesn’t think that will survive the drop, the tangled pile of cables by his bed, the sheets from his bed he thought were particularly pretty, the portrait of the old woman hanging on the wall. He repeats the process in Jon’s room, looking in vain for Chou, and in Basira’s, and in the room Melanie and Georgie had shared. </p><p>
  <em> “Martin!”  </em>
</p><p>“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he takes the stairs three or four at a time. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just had to - I just had to look for Ch-”</p><p>“Get the fuck out,” she grabs him at the bottom as he overcompensates and begins to topple, “We have to ring for help, we have to ring for someone, we have to get Jon-”</p><p>And as though the house can hear them, one of the support beams above the double doors to the entrance falls with an ominous crash, taking the doors with it, fire nibbling happily around the old wood. It’s reached the first floor, then, Martin thinks dazedly, and that means the whole basement is a write-off, and that means Jon is -</p><p>“Other exits,” Basira says, all business. “Martin. Martin. <em> Martin. </em>How do we get out of here? Where are the other exits?”</p><p>“Ah-”</p><p>“If we smash a window we’ll cut-”</p><p>Again, weirdly on cue, there’s the sound of shattering glass from the dining room. “Heat,” Martin says quietly. “You see it on all those crime dramas. Heat and pressure and - oh, <em> fuck-” </em>as he puts his hand on the wall and feels the old wallpaper bubbling under his fingertips, the heat and the old glue travelling upwards and disturbing air bubbles hundreds of years old. </p><p>Joking about <em> Midsomer Murders </em>by the lake is a long way away from this. </p><p>“Okay, okay, okay,” Basira grasps his elbow and drops it a moment later, “Okay, okay - glass. Infections it is. Let’s go, come on.”</p><p>Martin can hear it. </p><p>No, fuck that, Martin can feel it. Under his feet and on his arms, and on the top of his head. The fire is quick. How long does it take to burn down a house? How long does it take to burn down a <em> very old </em>house? </p><p>How long ago did they write those fire regulations, anyway?</p><p>Martin can hear it. </p><p>“There’s a door out by the kitchen,” he says, stopping Basira in her sprint to the far room and the windows, “No glass in it - very little glass in it - come on. Come on come on come on.”</p><p>She follows him now, and they tear through the kitchen and Martin has time to think he will miss the kettle. It was nice. The red paint was starting to chip off the heavy base, and the lid sometimes popped off with the pressure, but when Martin flipped down the whistling cap with his thumb, filled it by the spout from the sink, sat resting the flat of his palm on the circular handle, and he looked at Jon sitting at the kitchen table - </p><p>He used to love it. Those used to be his favourite moments, he thinks. </p><p>“Jon kissed me,” he says, as Basira grabs the oven gloves from the range and wraps them around her hand so she can open the door. The air up here is beginning to cloud, too, and his head feels dangerously light. </p><p>“I know,” Basira says, “You have blood, like, <em> all </em>over your face. How do you open this fucking door?”</p><p>“There’s oil in the range,” Martin says in that same tone of blank realisation, putting his hand over hers to wriggle the handle the way it likes to be wriggled. “What happens when an aga goes on fire?”</p><p>“The fire keeps happening, I believe,” Basira says grimly, and finally the door is open and both of them are tumbling out of the house into the fresh air. </p><p>Fresher air. Now Martin looks up, lying flat on his back in the gravel, and he can see the damage done to the windows and the fire burns up through them like eyes and everything smells of burning fabric and on the grass where he’d thrown his things out the window in the useless search for Chou. Jon would never forgive him if Martin had let him die, and not even thought to rescue his cat. </p><p>Oh, fuck. “Jon-”</p><p>Basira is lying on her front in the grass, vomiting. It’s mostly stomach acid, tinged black with the fire, and all her clothes have been mussed by the struggle in the basement and the fight to get out of the house. “I need to ring someone, I need to - my phone - Martin, do you have yours on you?”</p><p>“No, I-”</p><p>“Use mine,” says Georgie Barker, and Martin looks up and sees her standing over them, phone held out in the one hand she can still use, her whole face twisted in anxiety. “Please tell me Jon’s already out.”</p><p>Basira doesn’t even ask who she is; she takes the phone and begins dialling with one shaky hand, pressing it between her ear and shoulder. </p><p>Martin can’t reply. He doesn’t want to. “How come you’re - here?”</p><p>“We found out something. Where is he? Martin, where is he?”</p><p><em> “Jon!” </em>Right on cue, as though Martin can be shoved any further towards the edge, Melanie comes running around the side of the house clutching her cardigan around her, in a pair of differently-coloured shoes, her hair longer and dyed green this time. She skids to a halt when she sees them. “Jon-”</p><p>“He’s still inside,” Martin says, and turns around and vomits in the grass. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Tim met him when he was John Lloyd, a tall, muscular man, blonde and green-eyed. The small portraits of Jonah’s bodies were collecting along the wall, and he was getting bored of Lloyd at this point, but he’s always changed from body to body more because of chance than because of taste. Blackwood House is growing in reputation, and so more and more ghost-aligned people are coming to visit, but it still isn’t enough for Jonah.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> All the same, he finds Tim when he is John Lloyd, gathering up the bullet and tethering it firmly to the lost spirit in the house.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Something he has discovered, and used to his advantage many times since meeting Daisy, is that when you have complete control over the tether of somebody else and the knowledge of how to use it, it is very easy to change their mind. Daisy has no idea that she met him as William Elliott and watched him shift into Lloyd; no idea at all.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When Richard Mendelson comes along, it is the work of a moment to go to the basement, clutching the tethers between his new fingers, and change their mind.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Simple.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> But fixing memory is not changing it, and now Tim sits with the weight of the house over his shoulders, holding hands with Sasha on one side and Daisy on the other, looking down at Jon, the cold of death oncoming pulling him down every moment.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He remembers everything. He remembers Jon most of all, recently.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Jon looks like hell, but he’s still breathing.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> If Tim can do one last thing before he goes, he wants it to be this.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I know you,” Melanie says, when she’s stopped cursing at Martin. She’s still crying. They’re sitting on the lawn a very far way away from the house, the fire now solidly held between the walls and outside them, crawling up to the roof. Georgie is on the phone to emergency services, and whoever Basira was calling has hung up. </p><p>“Me?” Basira looks over, surprised to be addressed. Martin has gone off into the woods, apparently in search of the bones in the folly, but more probably to have a complete breakdown, and wash the blood - Jon’s blood - off his face. He looks terrible. They all do.</p><p>“You’re the police,” Melanie is still crying in great big globs down her cheeks, but in an unashamed way, like she’s been doing it for so long she’s forgotten to turn it off. “You caught me when I was breaking into that - the military place.”</p><p>“CMH,” Basira says absently. “Yeah. I did.”</p><p>“Who are you, exactly?” </p><p>“Police. Like you said.”</p><p>“You told Martin about me,” Melanie wipes the edges of her jaw with her fingers, and licks the resulting tears on her knuckles. “You told Martin about us. He said in his email it had been a - friend-”</p><p>“This wasn’t my fault,” Basira cuts her off before she can continue because she can see Melanie hunting for someone to hate and she refuses to let that be her. “I don’t know you. I just thought he might need the help. This was not - I didn’t - I liked Jon.”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Melanie says. She inhales, and it sounds like it costs her a great deal. <em> “Fuck </em>you. I’m going to find Martin.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Jon loved him, you know. Or at least - it really looked like he did.”</p><p>Basira keeps the kiss and the bloody handprint to herself. “It did. They did.”</p><p>“I-” </p><p>But whatever Melanie might want to say is bitten off inside her mouth, covered by the clamp of her hand, and she pulls herself by the jaw towards the woods, and as she runs Basira can see the clods of earth she disturbs with the tips of her platform boots. </p><p>Basira herself feels nothing. She tries. She had said as much to Dekker on the phone earlier. </p><p>
  <em> “A man is almost certainly dead or badly injured and I don’t feel anything.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Are you safe? Are you unharmed?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Dekker, I-” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He is somewhere busy. She can hear the cars passing him, one after another, thick and fast like rain. “I couldn’t give a damn about anyone else. If you’re safe, Hussian, then you start worrying about the damage. Have you called anyone else?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “You were the first,” she says, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. There’s stomach acid glistening on her skin, and curling her lip in disgust she wipes it on her front pocket.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Good. Don’t call emergency services.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “But-” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “You’re at Blackwood House. I’m right in saying you’ve got to the bottom of the disappearances, anyway? Found any of them alive?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Found all of them. None of them alive.” Basira knows what he’s doing. He’s giving her a structure to lean on, a rapport she’s more familiar with, and although she can see Martin vomiting into one of the bushes, and the woman with the broken arm and the shaved head cursing herself blind, already Basira feels calmer. She’s just reporting a crime scene to Dekker, and he’s just asking for the details, same as they do every week.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She can hear him tapping his fingers against the dash of his car. On watch, then. She wonders if he’s been assigned someone new. “Okay,” he says, “And gains?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Me. Martin. Two researchers from London arrived about five minutes ago.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Okay. Losses?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Jon. Jonathan Sims. He’s - he’s one of them.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Come on, Hussian, don’t be cagey.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “He can see ghosts,” she says, and then winces. “Could see ghosts.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “And he’s -” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “In the fire.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “And you set the fire?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Sort of.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Well done,” Dekker says, “Burn the tethers. I’m proud of you.”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Even if I killed a guy?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “You didn’t. He did.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “I set the fire.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “He stayed.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Basira makes a frustrated noise, but Dekker is unbeatable in one of his insufferable-logic moods. “I-” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Are they around you now? Civilians?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Yes, but-” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Then talk to them. Wait until the fire is burnt out, and then go through the stuff, and get whatever you can from it. Bring it back to me. We’ll talk this through, Hussain. Call me when you can and I’ll answer.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Okay,” Basira says, but he’s already hung up.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Tasks she can do - concrete things to focus on, she can do. She can do this. She can.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I heard they burn for weeks,” Martin says. </p><p>He hasn’t looked behind him, but he can hear Georgie’s uncertain step on the jetty. His socks and shoes are tucked beside the shore, and his trousers are rolled up so he can trail his toes in the water, and the whole scene is so serene it seems a pity to mar it by thinking about anything, so Martin isn’t. He won’t. If he does, if he even tries to, he feels the huge dam about to crack in his throat, and he isn’t sure he wants to be ready for how painful it will be to try and shut it. </p><p>So he’s thinking about the weather, and the lake, and his mum, and London, and a million other things instead. </p><p>Georgie comes down the jetty towards him. “That policewoman is talking about going through the ruin later on tonight, but I think she’s mental. You’re right.”</p><p>“She won’t find anything.”</p><p>“She’ll find-”</p><p>“She won’t find anything,” Martin says harder, and winces when his voice cracks on the last word. “Georgie, I don’t want - please. I’m sorry.”</p><p>She puts her free hand on his arm, and at last he looks at her. “Don’t be sorry,” she says, and he can see she’s been crying. Does that make him the coward, that he can’t even face it? “Don’t be sorry - you - you got out alive. It didn’t get to you.”</p><p><em> It </em>could be anything. The house. The ghost. Jon. The lifestyle, the knowledge that there really are things that go bump in the night. </p><p>Martin suspects it’s all of it. “But I-”</p><p>“You’re here, and that’s all you can ask for,” she says a little more insistently. Then she sits, and begins tearing off her shoes and socks. “I want - I -”</p><p>“Georgie-”</p><p>“We met in uni, you know. In choir. In <em> choir. </em>I’m a pretty good alto, and turns out Jon’s a nice baritone, and everyone said we should have - you know, because in third year I was lead alto and he was the only alt kid in the whole choir. He used to wear eyeliner every day. And, like, old t-shirts he found in charity shops all holes and seven sizes too big. He asked me out and we spent the whole time talking about our favourite ways to - to translate kinetic energy into electricity. You know. Windmills, and, and, those things they put in the ocean. Jon’s really passionate about, like, solar panels.”</p><p>Martin manages to laugh. “Of course.” </p><p>“Turns out I thought we were dating, and he thought we were just best friends hanging out in fucking Costa twice a week,” Georgie laughs all wet, and dips one foot in the water beside Martin’s. Her cast is covered in doodles, he notices, all in the same writing. <em> Love you baby. love u georg. want sum coffee? </em>Doodles of cats. </p><p>“Of course,” he says again. Looks into the water. There’s a stickleback there, all on its lonesome, flicking curiously below their feet. </p><p>“We moved in, y’know. I was getting my masters in Lit, and he was starting the - this was before the YouTube stuff, before that - did you see the meme that went a bit viral? It was Melanie swearing at a pear because Jon said it was haunted. It - I mean, Jon started doing all that before I did. He wanted to help people,” Georgie smiles down at the surface of the lake, “And then I met Melanie and she moved in too. It was never a… it wasn’t weird. It was - Jon’s granny died when we were in uni, and Mel doesn’t talk to her family much anymore, and I guess my ma is down in the retirement village. It was like that. Us three in the apartment. I did love him,” she looks up and even if Martin hadn’t seen her eyes, he would believe her. “I love him so much.”</p><p>“So do I,” he tells her, and swallows. “I only… I… when we were in the basement, the ghost was… fucking with Basira and me. And it showed me the worst… the worst thing. I guess. And it was him. Him - dead, and it being my fault. I set the fire.”</p><p>“No-”</p><p>“No, I <em> did,” </em>he presses, trying to make her see. “I - the ghost was gonna - he was gonna kill me. So I-”</p><p>“Martin, you're not the one - weren’t the one - shoving bookshelves on me, or dropping chandeliers on people, or trying to kill the people staying in your house. The… Jon. Jon wouldn’t be blaming you.”</p><p>“Jon can’t blame me because he’s-”</p><p>Georgie turns away at the last second, and Martin falters on the word, and somewhere in the distance he can hear a few grasshoppers as the lake settles down for the night. </p><p>He can still feel the hand on his cheek like a phantom, and he never wants the feeling to fade. </p><p> </p><p>But nothing about this fire is normal, because nothing about this is normal. Dekker should have told her. Perhaps he thought she would figure it out on her own. </p><p>Basira stares at the empty ruin of the house, black ash in the fading light, and follows the other three. They’re going to sleep in the van, and ignore the smell of the burning.</p><p> </p><p>Jon’s hand hurts, all the way up to his elbow and a little beyond, and his eyes feel gummed together. His throat is dry and terribly painful, and his tongue feels stuck to his teeth, as though he’s slept in without a drink of water before bed. He remembers regret, but not his own, and he remembers picking something up only to watch it crumble, and he remembers Ma-</p><p><em> Kissing </em>Martin. Because he’d known he was going to die. He thought at the time he was being selfish, to have left it so late before he realised what he wanted, but - but at least Chou is safe. Jon knows that. Chou has taken to wandering through the woods near Gerry’s body, and she’s a clever cat; she wouldn’t have stayed in the house with the fire. </p><p>So Jon must be dead, or dying. He remembers Jonah. He remembers how pitiable the man had been. </p><p><em> (You and I… we could know…. don’t you want to </em> know, <em> Jon…) </em></p><p>Jon wants to know. Of course he does. He’s lived his whole life in the desperate search for just a little more knowledge, a tiny bit more certainty to add to the puddle of things he knows for sure against the ocean of things he will never ever be able to find out more about. But he draws the line at whatever Jonah had wanted him to do - the Eye, the three tethers, the space for a fourth, Martin’s cheek with that bloody handprint-</p><p>“I think he’s awake,” says Sasha, which is how Jon <em> knows </em>he’s dead. </p><p>“No, he’d be making noise.” Tim. The cast of people he’s ended up with really isn’t helping Jon decide which side of the afterlife he’s landed upon.</p><p>“He’s awake,” says Daisy, and there’s a sharp prod to Jon’s thigh, like she’s poked him with her foot. <em> Definitely </em>dead. Apart from Jonah, or Elias, and that moment with Gerry at the end of the world, Jon has never been able to touch ghosts - and certainly not in a situation like this, when he isn’t making any effort to. </p><p>He’s a lot more upset about being dead than he thought he would be. Ghosts have told him in the past that it all slips away, and you accept it, and you cease to feel, but Jon still has a lot of stuff left to do - so many things he has to say, and people to say it to. </p><p>Another prod. </p><p>“Yeah, I’m awake,” he mumbles, prying his mouth open. Moisture, or the lack of it, has stuck it shut, and he can feel skin tearing from his top lip as he peels it from the bottom, and a hint of warm copper blood flooding into his mouth to get the whole process started up again. “Ow. I didn’t think being dead was this <em> sore.”  </em></p><p>“You’re not dead, idiot,” Daisy’s face is right in front of his, her pointy nose almost touching his. Her hands are behind her, and Jon is reminded of those pictures of Atlas at the corner of the old books in his school library, holding up the world without a thank you for his troubles. </p><p>“Are you sure?” He tries to move the hand that hurts the least, and finds to his surprise that it’s moving. “I feel dead.”</p><p>“You’re not dead.”</p><p>“How do you know?”</p><p>“We stopped you from being dead, <em> obviously,” </em>Sasha says, and only smiles at him when he looks at her with a facial expression he’s sure makes him look like a fish. </p><p>“Sasha-”</p><p>“We don’t have long,” Tim interrupts. Jon looks closer at him, and his face is whiter than usual, dripping out pale with something almost like exertion. “Jon. Can you move?”</p><p>“I-” Jon tests it, wriggling his toes and all his fingers, and cries out when he gets to his other arm. “Jesus. I can move - I can move, I <em> can, </em>but my hand-”</p><p>Daisy makes a concerned little noise. “I don’t think it will be - Jon, I think you should leave that for a moment. Can you stand?”</p><p>“Probably.”</p><p>“Then try it,” Sasha says. </p><p>Jon lies still on his back for a second, looking at the three ghosts that make up all his world, spilling out from one another in a wheel of the three of them. If he looks down he can see them holding hands, linking together, creating a little circle just big enough to hold him inside it. What’s so bad that the circle must be held?</p><p>Did <em> he </em>do this?</p><p>“Did I do this?”</p><p>“Do what?” Tim asks, as Jon struggles to sit up with his one useable hand. He still can’t look at the unresponsive one, in case he’ll hate what he sees, as he strongly suspects he will. </p><p>“You can touch - you - I should be burnt. I’m not. Did I do that?”</p><p>“I think so,” Sasha says contemplatively, “We’ve never been able to touch something before. Either that or Elias - or - or whatever he was, sent a whole pile of extra force through the house, and we just picked up the slack. We didn’t… decide to do anything. It all just happened.”</p><p>“So… what’s behind you?” Jon gingerly gets to his knees, wincing at the strain in his arms. “Fuck.”</p><p>Daisy shrugs, but carefully, and Jon can hear shifting behind her. “I <em> think </em>it must be the rest of the house, Jon, but I will be honest I haven’t been paying attention. How are the legs feeling?”</p><p>He reaches up with one hand, and Tim lets him snag onto his belt. “I - well. The legs are feeling still attached.”</p><p>“Better than they could be. Hands?”</p><p>Jon doesn’t look down. “How bad is it?”</p><p>“Still attached,” Sasha says softly, sweetly, but her eyes are drawn. Through the back of her head Jon can see ashy-black beams fallen, and stones stained black and sooty. </p><p>It all happened, then. Elias, Jonah, the fire; it hasn’t been some awful dream. <em> The kiss. </em></p><p>“You need to get out of here sooner rather than later,” Tim says close to his ear; Jon shudders at the contact, more from lack of it recently than from revulsion, although it’s odd to feel the words on his cheek, spoken by something with body. “Jon - <em> Jon. </em>You need to. You’re not…”</p><p>“I know,” Jon says, before any of them can list all the ways his body might shut down on him in the immediate future. “Which way do I go?”</p><p>“Up,” Daisy says, “Sasha - you and I. We’ll move the… Tim, you have the biggest reach. Can you keep him?”</p><p>“I can,” Tim’s arms descend either side of Jon’s torso in a weirdly intimate embrace, and the two women vanish out of the circle. <em> “Oof.” </em></p><p>“You’re holding the house off me,” Jon realises. </p><p>“Yes. What did you… <em> ugh… </em>think we were doing?” Tim’s face is really screwed up with effort, now, and Jon can only imagine the weight that must be spread across his shoulders and down his back, even with the aid of not actually being alive to have the sort of body those restrictions might matter to. </p><p>“Thank you,” Jon says quietly. His eyes hurt. His throat hurts. </p><p>He hopes Martin and Basira made it out.</p><p>“You helped us,” Tim whispers. “I’m sorry I shouted at you.”</p><p>“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” Jon replies, and he’s reminded of primary school, and of being told to apologise while hiding behind the teacher’s trousers. “Tim. I really am sorry. For… for everything. I wasn’t - I could have put it together quicker. I could have stopped it. I… it must have hurt.”</p><p>“It isn’t like you got off scott-free, Jon.”</p><p>“I-”</p><p>“Take it,” Tim grins down at him, although it looks like it takes effort. “I mean it.”</p><p>“I-”</p><p>
  <em> “Jon.”  </em>
</p><p>“Okay,” Jon whispers. He can see light filtering through Tim, and he can hear shifting and conversation, presumably as Daisy and Sasha dig them out. The light is the grey-blue of the very early morning, and there is no birdsong, but it’s more natural light than Jon thought he’d ever see again.</p><p>“We won’t be coming up with you, Jon,” Tim says. His eyes are very close to Jon’s, and his teeth are gritted. “You know that.”</p><p>“I… do. Am I the only thing keeping you here?”</p><p>“I think so. I…” Tim grimaces, and readjusts the weight. “Yes.”</p><p>Jon makes a face as a particularly large chunk of iron and stone comes shooting down past his face, landing just beyond the boundary of Tim’s arms. “Thank you.”</p><p>“You said that.”</p><p>“I’ll say it again.” Jon squeezes his eyes shut, but he hasn’t got the water left in him to cry. He thinks it would feel better if he had - more honest. Nothing he’s done recently has felt honest. </p><p>How long has it been? Time feels odd, now, and it’s running through his hands as though it has somewhere else to be, and someone else to spend itself on. Sasha and Daisy are back by his sides, taking a little of the weight off Tim, but now Jon has an unblocked view of the sky, the bluish shade of the sunrise. Nothing will fall on him. </p><p>“Your grip is slipping,” Sasha says. Her torso is see-through, almost totally see-through, and Daisy has all but vanished. </p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“You have to climb out, Jon.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>There is a long silence, while Jon inhales and prepares to properly stand and haul himself out. </p><p>“Jon,” Daisy says quietly, and her fingertips brush his jaw, “I am… happy to call you my friend.”</p><p>Jon opens his mouth to respond, but when he blinks, all three of them are gone, and he cannot be sure that they were ever there in the first place.</p><p> </p><p>Martin does not sleep that night. </p><p>Basira doesn’t. Georgie doesn’t. Melanie doesn’t. </p><p>None of them talk, or acknowledge that any of the others are awake; they sit in the van and share in one another’s silence as Blackwood House burns itself out behind them.</p><p> </p><p>And so when it boils right down to it, Gerry Keay has to realise that he never knew Gertrude at all; or if he did, it was only the version of herself she thought would be most likely to appeal to him when she met him. Kindly, but stern, but fair, but polite, but logical, all the things he wished he could find in himself, and all the things decidedly lacking in his mother. </p><p>Gertrude never loved, he is certain of that. There was a picture tucked into the glovebox of her car that he would look at when she was away - </p><p>A sepia Polaroid, much-folded and held, the corners bent and the layers peeling from one another, taken from behind. The woman pictured faces towards the ocean, the sun to the front of her, in that faded shade of brown casting out to pale yellow, birds in the sky just grainy blobs. The woman is tall and slender, in a pretty sundress Gerry always used to imagine was dark, dark black and navy, although in truth the colouring probably sets it as a forest-green. She wears a sunhat with a wide brim, one of those seventies ones made of plastic-woven straw, tied around with a pale ribbon. Her hair is long, untied, streaming down her back and into the wind, down to the end of her spine; dark blonde, Gerry always thought, or maybe red. </p><p>He always imagined she might turn in the picture, and smile at him. </p><p>On the back, in a hand that isn’t Gertrude’s, someone has written <em> so you have a face to the name. </em>The ink has smudged, as though someone has brushed their thumb over the writing one too many times. </p><p>This woman, whoever she is, is never mentioned by Gertrude in either her conversations with Gerry or her whispered dalliances with Adelard over the phone.</p><p>But Gerry touches his own lips, sometimes, when they find someplace to pull over and he curls up in his sleeping bag in the back of the car. He wonders if they ever met, Gertrude and this woman. He wonders whether they loved each other. </p><p>And he wonders if anyone will remember him like that, like somebody worth remembering. </p><p>And then he goes to sleep. </p><p> </p><p>Martin picks his way, alone, over to the ruins of the house. His feet hurt. His throat hurts. His eyes sting. His cheeks hurt, and he has cuts and bruises all over him from the fight with Elias and the subsequent scramble to get both himself and Basira out of the basement alive, still shouting for Jon, hoping in vain that he might hear and pull himself out of whatever situation he’s landed himself in this time. </p><p>It’s just dawn, and the sky is that unpleasant shade of grey that makes him tired to look at. It’s the colour of a sleepless night. </p><p>(The others hadn’t moved, or made a sound, when he got up to leave, but he knew they were all awake and staring at him.)</p><p>(The house is down and Jon is dead, and there is nothing they can do. Basira said they wouldn’t be calling anyone. Basira said her contact in the Met would sort it all out - that he was on the case, and that all she had to do was bring him some artefacts and everything would be fine. It would all be fine.)</p><p>Jon is dead. Martin stumbles on the warm ash, and keeps walking. </p><p>The fire had burnt itself out around four in the morning, which was far too quick according to Basira. <em> Ghostly energy in the building, </em> Georgie had said. <em> Can act as a suppressant for stuff like this. There’s probably enough material to keep the fire going for days, but if there’s enough leftover power, the fire will burn through where it was set and then die.  </em></p><p>And so it had. It looks, and feels, as though the fire was about a month ago, and they’re just now getting up to look at the ruins. Maybe it was. The night has felt long enough for that, at least. </p><p>Martin steps across to where he imagines the basement must be, and closes his eyes, the cool wind blowing across from the lake and against his forehead. Chou still hasn’t emerged, not even yesterday when he was dry-heaving into a tree, when every little raggedy daisy seemed to be the hint of her fur. Maybe she’ll never come back. She was only sticking around for Jon. </p><p>The wind is cold, and his hands are cold, and he misses the cat.</p><p>“Martin?”</p><p>Yeah. That’s how Jon would have said his name. His hand was hot yesterday, with the fire and the blood, and Martin had cried harder washing it off with the lakewater, pressing it to his cheek, as though that would fix anything. He hadn’t wanted to. He should have realised faster, done something better, agreed with Jon when he suggested they run. </p><p>Why hadn’t he?</p><p>
  <em> “Martin?” </em>
</p><p>Selfishness, pure and simple. Martin had something that was his, for once, something that had happened <em> for </em> him instead of <em> to </em>him, and he’d wanted to fight to keep it. This is his land. This is his house. </p><p>Hah. This is his big fat insurance payout, with any luck. This is his lake. This is his ghost problem. </p><p>His fault, if you follow that logic. </p><p>“M-Martin-”</p><p>“Jon?” Martin says, aloud, and then instantly feels like an idiot. Jon isn’t fucking there. Jon won’t ever be there again. He just hasn’t slept, and all he’s done instead is turn it over in his head, looking for all the ways it could have gone better. All the ways they could have lived. </p><p>“Martin - down <em> here-” </em></p><p>Martin doesn’t want to look in the basement, or the depths of where the basement once was, in case he really does see Jon down there. What happens to someone who’s been burnt? Martin’s only seen it in crime dramas and cartoons, crusty curled-up bodies with fingers clawing at blackened cheeks. Pompeii plaster-casts of people clutching one another, but of course Jon died alone. </p><p>Martin looks down, and sees Jon. </p><p> </p><p>Jon looks up, and sees Martin. </p><p>Once he realised they were gone, all three of them, he hadn’t the energy to move for a very long time. They must have been there, because a space has been cleared for him and there are enough struts and supports and fallen chunks of stone wall to let him clamber up if he needed, but that’s just another three people dead without any help from him at all. It must have been painful, what Jonah did to them. </p><p>It must have hurt. </p><p>And it hurts climbing up, ripping open the scars from the chandelier fall and the barely-oozed-over cuts from last night on his hand, his legs shaking, one of his arms useless up to the elbow and covered in a horribly pink and blistered burn that screams for his attention every time he looks at it. The hand there has formed into a claw, and every time he tries to twitch one of his fingers the agony shoots up to his shoulder. Jon doesn’t know much about burn injuries, but he suspects his hand won’t ever be the same again. </p><p>So yes, this hurts. His hands hurt. His head hurts. He needs a drink of water. </p><p>He hopes everyone else is alive. </p><p>And then he looks up, for the first time since he started struggling out of the wreck, and he sees -</p><p>
  <em> “Martin?”  </em>
</p><p>Martin doesn’t respond, or make any sign he’s heard Jon. His eyes are closed, and he’s shaking. It must be nearly six in the morning. </p><p>“M-Martin-”</p><p>“Jon?” Martin says, and then makes a face that could be a wince. His eyes are still closed. </p><p>“Martin - down <em> here-” </em>Jon bites off the rest of the sentence as an abrupt chill whistles down to the basement, down into his bones. His head is spinning. </p><p>And finally Martin looks down, and his face does several things very quickly, settling on an expression Jon cannot place at all. His cheeks are pink from the wind, his eyes are streaming (it must be from the wind) and his hair is a wreck of blonde and ash, and his mouth is hanging open, and his hands are clasped by his sides. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”</p><p>Jon aims for a smile, but he’s sure he lands on a grimace. “”I - Martin, I must confess I might need a hand here-”</p><p>“Oh my god,” Martin presses one of his hands to his mouth, and now his cheeks are wet and Jon can see how violently he trembles. “I’m - I should get - you’re hurt, you’re, you’re burnt, you - oh my god. <em> Jon. </em>I thought you were-”</p><p>“So did I,” Jon hisses as he tries to place his burnt hand on the next obstacle. “Martin - you’re safe? Basira, she’s-”</p><p>“She’s alive, we’re fine, we - Melanie and Georgie arrived, and they-”</p><p>“Oh, thank god,” Jon rests his forehead against an iron strut, the metal still just a little bit too warm to be soothing. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“I thought you were <em> dead.” </em>And Martin jumps the foot or two down to where Jon is, standing unsteady on a heap of rubble Daisy and Sasha must have constructed. This close and Jon can smell the blood on him, and the fire, and underneath that the soft linen that Martin is, as soft and soothing as he is himself. He touches Jon gently on the elbow, and Jon doesn’t mean to fall, but suddenly he is and through the sliding and the sound of metal groaning Martin grabs him by the waist and the side, avoiding as much as he can the ugly burn. </p><p>“I thought I was dead. You’re in good-” Jon coughs into his hand, and the mucus is black - “Good company.” </p><p>“Jon-”</p><p>“Martin-”</p><p>They stop. Jon laughs, but he’s sure it sounds just a bit more delirious than he wants it to. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You need to - those burns-”</p><p>“I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Your hand-”</p><p>“It won’t be any worse than what it was when it started.”</p><p>Martin frowns. “Your-”</p><p>“I meant it.” Jon leans forward and the warmth of Martin’s shoulder, and his cotton shirt, is infinitely more comforting against his forehead than the heat of a metal strut. “I would do it again and I meant it.”</p><p>Martin is quiet, but he doesn’t move Jon away; his arms, around Jon’s body, press just a little tighter to it. “Which part?”</p><p>“Any of it. All of it.”</p><p>“So would I,” Martin says, his lips pressed against the top of Jon’s head. It must smell of ash and burnt hair and fire; Jon hasn’t a notion why he stays there. </p><p>“Okay,” Jon says, and wishes he hadn’t. You don’t say <em> okay </em>when you’re in the middle of a romantic conversation. </p><p>“Jon,” Martin says, voice muffled still, “I’m not going to kiss you until you’re in hospital. Until we’ve called for an ambulance. Until your - arm, and your - your hands-”</p><p>“You don’t have to kiss me,” Jon says reasonably, and he manages to wriggle free just enough to stand on his toes in the ruins of Blackwood House and kiss Martin again - </p><p>And mean it as much this time as he did the last time. </p><p>And as much as he will all the times after that. </p><p> </p><p>[Video ID: An upload to the YouTube channel <em> What The Ghost! </em> it is twenty-two minutes and thirty-four seconds long, and is called <b>SPECIAL VLOG: big channel news, life updates + pet tax! </b></p><p>The video opens on four people crammed into the frame, all sitting along a table in a city flat, the sound of cars and sirens and the buzz of life loud outside the window. Melanie King to the left, her hair dyed completely pink and her right ear now fitted with a small blue lobe stretcher. Her arm is slung around Georgie Barker, who sits in a floral shirt, her hair freshly-buzzed, both arms free of casts. Beside Georgie sits Jonathan Sims, narrow-elbowed and smiling a little abashed, his hair braided down one shoulder, a long ginger cat stretched along the other. He’s in a dark green shirt. Next to him on the far right is Martin Blackwood, blonde-fading-to-white, in a <em> What the Ghost! </em>merch hoodie, smiling. </p><p>“Hey, guys,” Georgie says, leaning forward, “So as you all know, the relaunch of the podcast was a success-”</p><p>Melanie and Martin high-five behind the other two. Jon sighs, crossing his face with his palm. </p><p>“A success,” Georgie ignores them, “And so we said if it was we were gonna have some pretty big news, which we do. As you guys know, Jon here has a few side gigs with some haunted mansions-”</p><p>“Stop saying it like that,” Jon mumbles - </p><p>“And so because of some <em> personal news, </em>he’s going to be stepping down from the podcast and the channel to a more of a guest star role, because-”</p><p>“Everyone’s already seen the announcement,” Martin says, and wriggles his hand near the camera, not looking directly into the viewfinder. “I - Jon and I are-”</p><p>“Married,” Jon says, and lifts his own hand. Martin has a ring, but Jon does not; his left hand was the one burned in the accident last year that all the members of the channel are wary to talk about. Eagle-eyed viewers may catch sight of a slim silver chain around his neck going under his shirt, with something heavy and circular strung on it. “We got married. And - um - Martin has some property in, um, outside of London-”</p><p>“We’re moving to the country,” Martin says. “And we’re bringing Chou. Sorry, guys. We’ll try and post videos for you. We both have… jobs lined up down there. In a similar line of work to this. It’s a bit of a new thing, so I don’t think we’ll say any more until Ba- until we, uh, find our feet.”</p><p>“Okay, but in the absence of our two resident husbands, me and Mel have an announcement - we’re starting a new season of the ghost investigations, travelling up and down the country, visiting sites you probably won’t have heard about on the BuzzFeed lists. At the moment we’re planning twenty episodes with a <em> killer </em>season finale, so if you’re interested in getting involved, please email us.”</p><p>The video continues in this vein for another ten minutes. The last six minutes and fifteen seconds are dedicated to a compilation of phone camera clips of Chou terrorising Jon, while Martin laughs behind the camera.</p><p>Video ID ends.]</p><p> </p><p>And he means it as much as he did the last time, and as much as he will every time after that, over and over again until the end. </p><p>“I love you,” Martin whispers. </p><p>“I love you too,” Jon says, and they sit by the lake and watch the sun rise and everything is impossibly, wonderfully, okay.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p>   </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>the art is by my wonderful girlfriend @snoriangray on tumblr, so please give her a wee like/rb/follow &lt;3 </p><p>WELP! here we are. i can't really believe this begun because i was watching bbc ghosts and really, really missing the shenanigans, because over the months it's transformed into something so far away from what i thought it would be in the best of ways. it's been so fun, and it's definitely helped me get through the worst of this quarantine. </p><p>thank all of you for sticking with this, commenting on every chapter, kudosing, being absolutely incredible. thank you to abby and cerys for cheerleading all the way through, and being absolutely brilliant and patient as ever. </p><p>i have a few extra bits of content for this (a bbc ghosts x tma crossover i wrote back in the day) and a few scenes from the 70s with agnes, gertrude, and adelard, who i think i didn't get to investigate as much as i thought i would. if you guys are interested in that, i might post them!</p><p>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>twitter: sweetlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts</p><p>love you all &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>please comment &amp; kudo if u enjoyed, it makes a world of difference! &lt;3</p><p>twt: sweetlyblue<br/>tumblr: softlyblues<br/>cc: sweetlysofts  </p><p>also i've started tracking the softlyblue tag on tumblr, so ... feel free to put stuff there too, lmao</p><p>(and seriously watch bbc ghosts. the captain is my favourite.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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